Kingdom Hearts: War Games
by AzureAceStarburst
Summary: When a strange girl comes to save her world and whisk her away on a magic adventure, Veronica is more than ready to knock her out, steal her ship and set off on her own path. With a small army of friends and followers at her side, she will face a new foe that threatens not just the light, but everything in the universe and everything she holds dear.
1. Gee, it sure is boring around here!

When a strange girl comes to save her world and whisk her away on a magic adventure, Veronica is more than ready to knock her out, steal her ship and set off on her own path. With a small army of friends and followers at her side, she will face a new foe that threatens not just the light, but everything in the universe and everything she holds dear.

* * *

It was just like any other Friday night, until it wasn't.

I'd left the town's library late at night, just as it was closing, and I'd left behind a large pile of books around my seat. That was my seat, in the left corner of the library, near all the non-fiction books. Books on mechanics, art, science, military tactics, psychology, anatomy and physics, interspersed with the occasional fiction book, mainly murder mysteries and action thrillers. My roommate, Clara Weiss, had sort-of been with me... she had spent the whole time sitting near me, using the smartphone I'd modified for her, repeatedly checking her blog for any new comments. My name is Veronica Anne Blackwood, I'm 17, and this is my story.

We were walking through the town at night alone(A not-so-dangerous task, considering how boring my town was), on my way to our not-so-impressive one-bedroom apartment. I was going to try an actually finish a Let's Play series, and my waitress/online gambler roommate Clara was going to begin her nightly routine of all-night high-stakes online poker games. And I was probably going to spend most of the night helping her. Our feet fell loudly on hard asphalt as we walked through the starless pitch-black night illuminated only by old dull-orange streetlights.

This town may have been boring, but it didn't mean our outfits had to be. My body was wider and taller than most, mainly because I ate like a starved moose and exercised like a madwoman. I keep my body in good shape because I keep telling myself that some day, I could run away from this town, and get a job as a Dancer or Mechanic. My Uncle, on the other hand, never tires of joking about how he thinks I'll become the 'other' type of dancer.

It was cold outside tonight, so I was wearing a cobalt woolen beanie I'd knitted myself over my head, which had short auburn hair at the front, two long bangs, and a long ponytail at the back. My brown eyes were covered by large Aviator Sunglasses(They were actually Prescription Sunglasses for my minor Long-Sightedness.). I had a marine-blue scarf around my neck, and the thickest white jumper I owned strained to cover my chest. My hands were covered by large black woolen mittens, my heavy "Mountain-climbing trousers" weren't really doing much against the cold, and my feet were covered in large and heavy brown hardened-leather mountain-climbing boots that only covered the foot and ankle. Although it couldn't be seen, I had two pairs of white socks on under my boots, because I really, really don't like the cold.

My rapid(Boredom is no excuse for walking slowly, as I always say!) steps echoed through the boring silent night as my heavy boots hit the asphalt pavement time and time again.

As usual, we walking home, completely alone and completely bored. "Nothing exciting ever happens here." I sighed as I did every night, hoping it would finally jinx things and make something exciting happen. Something fun, something adventurous, something where I could use my intellect for more than just helping my roommate win at online poker often enough to pay our rent, and possibly some day get us enough money to fulfill our dream of starting our own restaurant and my dream of starting my own mechanic-shop-place-thing.

I heard something shift around in the night, and I stopped and tensed, hoping for some excitement. "Stop. I hear something." I muttered darkly.

"Maybe it's a wild animal? Or a mugger? Or a ninja assassin? Or a ninja assassin from the future?" Clara said hopefully, getting excited.

I saw a small black puddle, like the oil slick from a car, slowly move down the street towards me. ...Wow, what a letdown.

"...What is that?" I asked disappointedly.

It was so dark, I'd only noticed it thanks to the off-yellow streetlights, but now that I was actually paying attention and I knew what to look for, it was a little easier to see. I was ready to disregard it, and maybe leap over the puddle to show off and temporarily alleviate my boredom, when something crawled out of the oil- No, the oil was moving inwards. Whatever that stuff was, the creature was made out of it, like a puddle becoming sentient and freezing itself into a living ice sculpture.

The creature resembled a stylized cartoonish black ant, with a rounded jet-black carapace and glowing angular yellow lights for eyes. It stood hunched over on two legs, its arms wriggling and writhing as it looked at me, analyzing me, watching me. I had never seen this thing before in my life, but it looked strangely adorable. Evil and really creepy, but also kinda adorable.

Two more puddles slid up to the creature on either side, forming into identical copies of the same black figure.

I wanted to go up to them and stroke them, but then I remembered something I'd learned from a lame TV Show I'd half-watched, it was about a dog-master who cured misbehaving dogs and educated their unbelievably moronic owners through his mastery of the Dog mind.

First, I had to let these creatures know who was boss. I took a strong, powerful stance, and glared at the creatures. They ignored it, and shambled towards me. Great, that didn't work. Curse you, lame television!

I took a few steps back, trying to keep my distance. I didn't know what these things were, not that I'd tell anyone that. Actually... Considering their liquid-based bodies, I doubt anyone on this planet would know about them. Except for the conspiracy theorists, who'd use this creature as evidence for whatever crazy superweapon Weapon of Mass Destruction theory they were coming up with next. ...They'd probably pay a lot for that 'Evidence'.

I reached into my right pants pocket, and took out a large spherical coinpurse slightly bigger than my palm, the red felt straining to contain a large rock I'd placed inside it. Why do I keep a rock in a purse with me at all times? Well, I'd respond with, _I don't tell you how to live your life!_ ...but the real answer would be, _In case of an emergency, I'd have a concealed weapon. An ordinary rock, inside a cheap purse. There aren't any laws about concealed Pet Rocks, are there?_

I stood there, with my pet rock in my right hand, waiting for those creatures to get close enough. I decided: I'd knock them out with my trusty Pet Rock, who, funnily enough, was actually named Rocky 'Trusty' DeBrea. And then, I'd take these creatures home, leak proof of their existence online, and sell them to the highest bidder. I'd retire with the money, and go down in history as the woman who exposed how he government created the ultimate superweapon... Giant mutated dog-sized Black Ants made of living black-steel?

Those creatures pounced at me. I swung down my rock onto the middle one's head-

My rock, and the arm/hand that held it, passed right through the black creature's head, as if it was nothing more than a hologram. Then it got in close, threw all of its strength and power into a shaky downwards slash, and I knew it was real. It's weak, dull claws only managed to catch on my jumper rather than cut anything, but I wasn't taking any chances.

"Clara, run. Get back to our house, I'll lead them away!" I shouted. I turned around and ran. I ran- no, it was a tactical retreat! My own body and even my own pet rock passed through that creature, so I could not harm it. I just had to run, and find something else to use. And, I had to let Clara get to safety, and maybe find something she could use on them instead. I wonder if those Black Ant Ghosts were fireproof? Perhaps I could find some oil or beer, and I'd set those creatures alight.

I ran and kept running, and... I might have screamed a little. Okay, a lot. I ran quickly, because I always jogged to school when I was a kid. I was a firm believer that Armageddon would happen any day now, and my fitness, mechanical skills, tactical mind and intellect would come in handy...

Except it was finally happening, demonic creatures were rising up from the ground, and my strength was absolutely useless against them. I... was absolutely useless against them.

I kept running, fighting down the emotions welling up inside of me and trying to keep calm, and focus on what was important: Not getting eaten by Shadow Ants.

"Hey, girl!" Someone female shouted out, standing in the dark area between lampposts. She aimed the fanciest sword I'd ever seen at me, and while it was too dark to see her clearly, I could see the silver blade in her hands just fine. The weapon was like a silver one-handed gladius sword, with sharp golden barbs pointing backwards along the lower edge of the blade and a pearl handle studded with black diamonds. A princess-pink bow edged with platinum was tied around the end of the hilt. "Duck!"

I ducked forwards low and began running like a ninja, expecting her to throw her sword, and to protect my sanity I instantly assumed this was a dream.

She generated a spherical orb of fire at the end of her sword and fired it with a loud "Hyaa!", the recoil from the blast swinging her sword upwards like a shotgun.

The fireball flew towards me, and I dove out of the way, more scared than I'd like to admit.

The fireball hit the Black Ant in the center and exploded like grenade, incinerating all three in a fiery blast that somehow only expanded about five spherical feet and then imploded, not leaving behind a single trace.

I got up, and looked at the girl with the weapon. "Thanks for the save!" I called out.

"You're welcome!" She chirped happily, stepping into the light.

My first thought upon seeing her was: _Isn't she cold in that outfit?_. My second thought was: '_This girl looks like a bad OC_. My third thought was: _When was the last time this girl ate?_. And my fourth thought was: _Who is this girl, how did she get her powers, and how can I get some for myself?_

Judging from her face, she was in her teens, but her outfit certainly wasn't 'age-appropriate', as my aunt would say. I assumed her hair was dyed; as her hair was split right down the middle, as though she had drawn a line down the middle of her head or placed a ruler there and used two separate hair dye bottles on each side. On her hair's right side, she had long locks of silver that fell straight down, while the left side was longer, shiny midnight black, and got curlier as it neared the base. Two black cat ears poked out from the top of her head. Her body was supermodel-beautiful but not really my type, it was unhealthily thin, except she somehow had an impossibly-curvy chest and rear along with it. She wore a not-so-modest purple evening gown with a dangerously low neckline, and a long black thin rounded cat-tail extended from beneath her dress. I had assumed the tail was decorative, until I saw the tail twitch and move. Her eyes were glowing an inhuman shade of rave-glowstick neon green that glowed subtly like two small LED lights, and she had inhuman catlike pupils that could probably be from contact lenses instead... but after the tail thing and the magic weapon, I wasn't taking any chances or making any assumptions.

_Wow, she looks like a really bad OC. Her parents must be real proud of her._ I thought to myself once again. _Then again, the moving cat tail... a realistic prosthesis, perhaps? Biotech? Or, if this is a dream and she's the protagonist, then the action will be where she is. I'll follow her, make her give me her powers or weapon, then I'll have my own infinitely-better spinoff show._

"Hi, beautiful!" I began flirting. I assumed she was over 16, but just to be safe, I decided to keep things restricted to nothing more than very light and rather cheesy flirting. "I'm Veronica. What's your name?"

"How funny, I ran into a different Veronica a few worlds back." She said in her light, airy voice that should probably sound pure, but to me she just sounded very absent-minded. "My name's Katherinn Eveningrose Rose-Of-Sharon Rising-Tide Primrose-Chan!"

A very plastic smile formed on my face as my eyes widened and hardened. _That's it- If I can't befriend her, I'll knock her out and take her stuff. That's obviously not her real name, and she's obviously some idiot girl that got lucky and found a magic weapon. I hate lucky idiots._ I thought to myself. "Wow, you're so pretty!" I fake-gasped, slapping the palms of my hands to my awestruck face like a dumb little kid from a TV advert who'd just seen the latest lame girl's toy. "Can I be your friend, and join your team?"

She giggled. "I'd love to, sweetie, but I already have a team, and we already have five members. Come on, you can't be a hero! You don't even have a weapon!"

_Did she just call me sweetie?!_ I thought angrily, but I kept up my fake smile. "Maybe you could give me yours?" I asked hopefully.

Her weapon disappeared in a flash of silvery light. "Sorry, but I can't. That weapon's mine. And again, you don't even have a weapon."

"Perhaps you could give me a spare one of yours? Or a holdout weapon? Come on, don't tell me you're trying to save the world with just the one weapon!" I said, pressing further.

"No. I'm not giving you my weapon." She said firmly, closing her eyes and shaking her head like an adult trying to make things very, very obvious for her idiotic child. "You can't be a hero, you don't have a weapon. And I'm not giving you my weapon, because this is my weapon and you can't have it!"

Alright, that was it. Time to pull out all the stops. It was time... for Awesome Philosophy Time. I folded my arms, my face a mask of serenity, and I calmly said, "You mentioned that I couldn't be a hero, because I don't have a weapon. Well tell me, hero, which matters more: The weapon one wields, or what is inside one's heart? Do you not fight enemies with weapons larger than yours? But you win, because your heart is pure. And I too, have a pure heart. My heart is strong and pure, and it shall be my heart, my mind, and my soul that slices through my foes faster and swifter than any weapon. A weapon does not make a hero... a hero's heart makes a hero."

My face remained calm and serene and zen as buck, but on the inside, I was fist-pumping. _Heck yeah, deep philosophy! 2Deep4You! Suck on that, little miss dumb-luck!_

She blankly stared at me, and I could tell from her expression that she hadn't understood a single word I'd said. After a four-second beat/pause, she smiled and said, "Sorry, but I won't let you have my weapon. Go home."

_Then you've made your move. _I thought coldly. _And soon, I will make mine._

I wasn't entirely sure if I could beat this girl in a fight, considering her weapon, weapon skills, and magic. If I was going to knock her out, I'd need the advantage of surprise.

"So, I'm assuming you're not from around here?" I asked innocently, moving closer.

"No, I'm from Traverse Town. My Homeworld was overrun by the Heartless and my parents were killed and eated, so I spend my days adventuring through all the worlds, and hunting down ALL of the Heartless!" She shouted, leaning over and clenching both fists, her chest bouncing as she moved. That caught my eye, and I stared for a few seconds before remembering what I was doing.

I'd never heard of Traverse Town, or The Heartless, so I decided to ask about them. And it's 'Eaten', not 'Eated'. But still, even if this was just a dream, it was the most interesting dream I'd had in a while. "Where's Traverse Town? And what are The Heartless?"

"Traverse is a really pretty town really, really far away from here!" She said excitedly, throwing her arms up into the air to emphasize how far away it was. Her chest bounced again, and it distracted me again. I would have missed everything else she'd said, but she caught my

attention again when she said, "I got here in my Gummi Ship."

I blinked, looking back up at her face. "Sorry, come again? You got here on a what Ship?"

"A Gummi Ship!" She chirped happily.

I tilted my head. "Uh... do you mean a Galleon Ship? Big mast, huge hull, plenty of- tons of cannons?"

"No, a Gummi Ship! She insisted, stamping her foot angrily like a little kid. My attention bounced away, and so did her enormous chest. "It's a Gummi Ship, it's a Spaceship made out of magical blocks of sweets that can work as a ship!"

I blinked, distracted from the alluring show by the voice inside my head that called itself the Voice of Reason. It talked to me in its weirdly calm, all-knowing tone, and it said, "This girl is insane. Stop staring at her chest, get her stuff, and run! ...Wait, did she just say she rode a spaceship made of sweets?!"

"Did you just say you got here riding a spaceship made out of sweets?!" I asked in confused outrage, forgetting my smiling mask.

"Yeah! Want to see it?" She asked happily.

"Y-Yes! Sure, certainly!" I stammered. I took a half-second break to compose myself, and then calmly and happily said, "Absolutely, take me to it!"

She jogged away from the town and into the surrounding forest, apparently not knowing that it's dangerous to go into the forest at night. ...Naturally, I go into the forest at night once every

fortnight, armed with only my Pet Rock, in the hopes that something will happen, but nothing ever does. Sometimes, I take Clara with me, and that makes the boredom a little more bearable.

I followed the girl who claimed to be named Katherinn Eveningrose Rose Rose-of-Something-Or-Other Primrose-Chan for a few minutes, and I was surprised at how slowly she jogged. Heh, some hero. We went pretty far into the forest, the rough dry dirt and dry leaves beneath our feet seeming far too loud on this cold moonless night. The trees were large, thick, healthy and spread apart rather far, yet Katherinn somehow knew exactly where she was going.

I was so bored and going so slowly, I couldn't even do what I usually did when bored: Work out to the point of exhaustion, and occupy my mind with how tired I was, and how much I believed I sucked for still not being as strong or fast as those record-breakingly fit people I saw online and in the Olympics.

"Hey, Katherinn... What are The Heartless?" I asked, my voice completely level. For me, this was no harder than power-walking.

"They're an evil, evil blight upon the Omniverse! They're evil monsters that eat hearts, and stay in the shadows except when they don't, and they kill people just for fun, and theiy steal their souls which are actually called hearts, and they're EEEVIIIL!"

"EEEEVIIIIL!" I echoed, remembering something I'd seen on TV. I then noticed she'd said 'Blight'. Who the heck says 'Blight' these days?! 'Blighters', maybe, but never 'Blight'! "So... you go to other worlds, and fight The Heartless there?"

"Yeah. I hate all Heartless, they killed my parents!" She yelled, shaking a fist at the sky. I kept my eyes on the horizon, trying very hard not to stare at her chest as she jogged in the bounciest way possible.

"...And your home planet?" I suggested.

"That too!" She yelled, waving both fists at the sky.

"So... your entire planet was overrun by those tiny adorable Black Ants?" I asked, not hiding my amusement very well.

"They are not all... that adorable." She pouted adorably. "And those things are called Shadows, not Black Ants. The ones that came to my world were big and scary! They had tentacles, and wings, and balls!"

And now, I was interested. "Sorry, what?"

"Big ones!" She shouted, gesturing with her hands. "They threw dark exploding energy-balls at me! One of them blew up my house-palace!"

"Oh. ...Fine." I said, speeding up. She was too slow for my tastes, in more ways than one.

"Hey, wait up!" She shouted, jogging faster.

Eventually, we made it to a large, blackened smoking crater about the size of my house. In the center of the crater, there was something about the size of a tiny one-person electric car, and it looked like somebody had created a 3D sculpture out of brightly-coloured hot-pink, purple and butter-yellow plastic cubes and Tetris pieces, and they'd tried to make it resemble a rather badly-drawn 8-bit spaceship from an awful 8-bit game.

If the ship down there was made of a more reasonable substance, like wood or metal, and it didn't look like an ugly 8-bit eyesore, I'd describe it as a generic spaceship's escape pod. Or perhaps a space-age one-man rowboat. Instead, the Voice of Reason within me was saying in the most deadpan tone possible,_ "I'm not sure how this crazy lady crashed an art sculpture into your forest badly enough to crater the earth and singe the ground, and I don't want to know... and I'm not sure any person was meant to know."_

I responded by folding my arms, closing my eyes and thinking to it, _Shut up, Reason. She's using Magic, it doesn't have to follow logic._ I insisted. I then opened my eyes and sadly looked down at the ship._ "Or good design sense, it would seem. Seriously, this thing is so __un-aerodynamic!"_

"This is my ship!" Katherinn Rose Something-or-Other 'I forgot her overly-long name already' Rose-Chan said proudly, jumping down to it and crouching down slightly, not fazed by how she'd just jumped into a very big, very deep crater, and she should have broken something upon her fall. Because I didn't have her probably-magic-enhanced strength, I walked to the edge and with a short hop, I landed on the charred powdery dirt and began sliding down. I'd done this before on sand dunes, when I visited my aunts, the ones I liked. I'd never done it with dirt before, but it seemed similar enough.

I slid to a halt about a quarter of the way down, as gravity decided the incline wasn't good enough any more. I didn't care, and I gleefully sprinted the rest of the way down. Oh, how I loved the feeling of running downhill. Gravity pulls you along faster, wind resistance seems to matter less, and it feels like everything in the world agrees with you, and wants to support you and help you to go faster as you run in the direction it wants you to go in, and you're doing what you are meant to be doing. Even the fact that I was allowing gravity to decide what direction I took didn't matter to me in that moment, because I was going fast. I loved going fast. ...I still wasn't as fast as those competing in the Olympics on TV, but some day, I'd get there.

As I reached my destination - The blocky eyesore of a spaceship, and the weird but cute girl cheerfully waiting for me - I slowed down to a jog, and eventually stopped close to the brightly-coloured ugly spaceship. "So... this is your spaceship?" I asked uncertainly, hoping with all my heart that this was just the key/homing beacon that'd summon her real ship down from the skies like an enormous flying bird. I got another good look at this so-called ship, and as I leaned back to get it out of my 'Too close for my long-sightedness, but my sunglasses are helping, it's just kinda blurry now range', I noticed things I'd missed the first time I'd looked, before I'd gotten into the crater.

The spaceship was designed like an 8-bit rendering of a bullet-shaped escape pod, with a rounded point at the front and a circular base at the back, with some butter-yellow and firetruck-red cubes in the shape of either an oversized exhaust pipe, or whatever the fiery part of a rocket was called(I'm a mechanic, not a rocket scientist!). The ship's lower half was made of large purple cubes that appeared to be made of plastic. The top half, garish hot-pink cubes. Near the nose-cone, on the top half, I saw a cluster of bright butter-yellow cubes where a car's windscreen would be, and it'd probably serve the same purpose if the cubes weren't completely opaque. I sincerely hoped the cubes worked like one-way glass, allowing the driver to see outside but not allowing anyone to see in. Finally, the ship had four large blocky forward-facing butter-yellow cannons mounted at the front of the ship, arranged like the four corners of a square.

I liked the cannons, and if the blocky design was a required feature on all ships of that model then I guess I could work with it, but... After I stole this, I had to look into getting this thing re-painted, anything but pink. And maybe I could add some more weaponry.

"Yep, that's my ship!" Katherinn said cheerfully, patting her ship on its side as though it was a dog. A few cubes of pink plastic fell off the other side from the impact, and I facepalmed.

"Oh!" She said, running over and picking up the cubes, gathering them up in her arms. She slowly put each one back onto the ship, and judging from the way electricity arced to the cubes and pulled them back onto the ship with a loud metal clunk when they got close enough, I assumed there was some kind of electromagnetic charge keeping all of those cubes stuck together. _"Wonderful, she built a ship out of magnetized plastic cubes."_ My Voice of Reason dryly said to me. _"But can it fly?"_

"Can it fly?" I asked Katherinn, sounding hopeful.

"Sure! It's a good one, this here Gummi Ship! Standard-Model, with a lot of modifications made by me!" She said proudly with a wide smile, not realizing that if her ship was modified in any way, it no longer counted as standard-model.

"I love the cannons." I said with a huge grin grin. I liked all weaponry, really, but especially stuff that blew up, big stuff that blew up, or stuff that blew big stuff up. "But... do they have to be bright yellow?" I asked, my grin faltering.

She looked at me as though I'd grown a second head. "Wait a second, you aren't one of those evil people who want their ships to be black and red and purple, are you?"

"What?! No, of course not!" I insisted as I internally deleted my design idea for the ship I was planning on getting: a red, black and purple ship with at least ten cannons. If those were considered evil colours in cartoon-land, then I'd just go with a different colour scheme. One with no pink. I always disliked the colour pink, maybe because it was always all over those lame girl's toys I was supposed to like as a kid. As a kid, I didn't play with toys, I just exercised and read books. And when my parents or my primary school forced me to play with toys, I'd use a yoyo, and either do awesome yoyo tricks or 'accidentally' hit stuff with it. When I was in primary school, they'd give out toys to play with, and if there wasn't a yoyo, then I'd take the biggest toy car they had, and 'accidentally' crash it into the toy houses and tiny toy people the other girls were playing with. I think the funniest time that happened was the first time, back when I was an adorable little kid and I'd rolled my huge monster-truck toy over towards where the other girls were playing with tiny doll people, one each, pretending to be

their dolls and pretending they were all family members. I always hated that game, because the families were lame and they never did cool stuff. My monster-truck rolled over their 'little boy' doll(Sadly, not the nuke, just a generic doll designed to look like a small child) and the other girls actually played out a scene where the other doll family members cried over their dead doll son. It was hilarious, because they came up with really awful dialogue for it. Heh, good times. Gooood times.

Katherinn peered closely at me, as if she was trying to read my thoughts by staring at my wide, surprised eyes. She didn't seem to notice the minor flashback I'd had. "Well, alright then." She shrugged, looking back at her ship. "Well... I think this is where we part ways."

"You're not going to take me with you?" I asked sadly.

"No, sorry. This is where you must stay." She said sadly, patting the side of her ship. With a pneumatic hiss, the top half of her ship opened up as if it was the lid of a clam. "This was just a quick Heartless-exterminating visit. I'm going back to Traverse Town, to get some more supplies, and meet up with my friends in three weeks."

"Please let me come with you! Can't I sit on your lap? Or you sit on mine, since I'm bigger?" I begged desperately. I could not allow the first interesting thing to happen to me all year to slip away from me like this! As I spoke, I moved behind Katherinn, getting out of the

girl's field of vision and as I moved, I got a better look at the spaceship's controls. The whole thing looked really, really simple, and... were those two arcade-game joysticks where the steering wheel or flight stick should be?! It was! It wasn't from any console on this planet, but I recognized the way the buttons were placed atop the hand grips, just like an arcade game. And I saw two, pedals on the floor, only two. No clutch, so it must be Automatic Transmission. I knew I could figure out how to pilot this thing, I just had to keep this girl talking until I could knock her out.

"Yeah, what's up with that, anyway? I've never actually met a human girl as tall as you, even in the other worlds I've been to." She asked, forgetting everything.

"I'm only six-foot!" I insisted. "...-ish!" I added reluctantly. I was only six-foot-one, that wasn't freakishly tall! ...Right? "Still, I could squeeze into your ship's cockpit as you drive, and I'd get out and buy my own ship when I get there!"

"Sorry, but no, my ship only has room for one, so it won't fly if more than one person is on board. Doesn't matter who that one is, but it'll only accept one."

"What about... what about pets?" I asked desperately, running out of things to say.

"Pets don't count towards the limit, but only non-sentient animals can be pets."

"What is sentience?" I began calmly, resuming my Awesome Philosophy Time. "If you define sentience as the capability to learn, to adapt, to view, comprehend and understand your surroundings, then all living things on this planet have that sacred-"

"Sentient means talking." She said, cutting me off.

I frowned, both at her ignorance on the subject of sentience, and her cutting me off. "That isn't what sentience means." I said coldly.

"Doesn't matter. Talking animals need an extra seat, non-talking animals can ride on your head or lap. It's the rules."

"Well, that's a terrible design!" I snapped. "What happens if you find an injured person, and you need to take them home to a hospital? But you can't, because your ship only has one seat?!"

"If they're alive, they count as people, and they'll need their own seat, or their ship." She shrugged. "Besides, they wouldn't need a hospital if they're still alive, they'd just need a Potion." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small thin forest-green vial the size of a pen, with a plastic cap at the end.

"That's a Potion? ...Can I have one?" I asked, ignoring her weird and rather dumb comment about hospitals not being for still-alive people.

"Yes, and yes. I brought ten of these, and I haven't used one, so here you go." She said lazily, turning around and casually tossing it back at me, as if those potions were worth less than dirt to her. I carefully caught it with both hands and put it in my pocket, and smiled.

"Thank you!" I said to her.

Wow... She'd given me free stuff. I liked her now. So... I was starting to feel bad about what I was about to do. Did I have to knock her out and steal her ship at all? Maybe I could let her go, then I'd go home and find someone to analyse the potion. A Full Spectral Analysis should reveal the secrets of this 'Potion', and how to make more. Then I could sell this stuff, and make a lot of money. Maybe get some factories to mass-produce the stuff, and get some appearances on Talk Shows to promote the World's First Miracle Cure that Actually Works For Realsies. I'd go down in history as the woman who invented and released the miracle-cure for everything except death... and now she has her pharmaceutical company(named after herself, of course), which is now incredibly large and richer than Bill Gates thanks to selling all those 'Potions', has her Research and Development Team currently working on a cure for death... as well as financing other companies' attempts to build better and faster computers, get into space and colonize other worlds, build better weaponry, and make very cheap soup-in-a-cups that actually tasted good. And reduce the price of salads so they'd match the price of cheap and awful food, so poor people can eat healthily.

That would be great. However...

I had absolutely no confirmation that the 'Potion' vial in my pocket wasn't actually a mixture of Snake Oil, a rare variety of Placebo, a thickening agent like Flour, and some green Food-Colouring blended together and put into the clear plastic container of a tube of Bubble Mixture, with the Bubble Wand snapped off the lid so I wouldn't notice what it was right away. In fact, I think that' if I had to make a fake copy of this thing, that's how I'd make it. Even if there was something useful in this weird green liquid, like the dew of a plant that can help with cell regeneration... could I find any plants like that on this world? Could I afford to have the required parts chemically synthesized? Or maybe the 'Potion' was just something mundane, like that all-natural all-fake hippy-herbal-remedy stuff for sale online, but enhanced by magic? Or maybe this 'Potion' was made from impossible-to-find ingredients, like dragon-eyes and zombie hearts and donkey tears, and it only took effect when consumed by an alien, because their alien body could use the nutrients to self-heal faster... or a magician, because

their magic would automatically transmute the rare but useless materials into something his/her body could use, the law of Equivalent Exchange allowing the magician to turn the rare materials into a lot of useful but common materials, like minerals and cells.

Yes, this 'Potion' may not be the Golden Goose I thought it was after all. So, why should I give up my one shot at real adventure, just so I could go home and hope my lazy attempt at 'Cashing in my chips before the game really begins', as Clara would say, would actually work?

My mind was made up. This 'Katherinn' What's-her-name was going down, and I was stealing her ship and going to the stars.

"So, Katherinn..." I said happily, reaching into my pocket and getting out Trusty Rocky DeBree, my Pet Rock. "What was your home like?"

"Oh, it was lovely!" She said happily, smiling fondly as I crept up behind her. "Everyone was always so nice and kind to me! My Daddy was the king, and my Mommy was the Queen, and my best friends were the Commoners and Ninja that lived in our Space Kingdom of Rosa-GAH!"

I smiled coldly as I watched the magic girl slump to the ground, completely unconscious after just one solid hit to the head from Rocky DeBrea, my trusty Pet Rock. Sometimes, I wish it could talk, so I could congratulate it for keeping me safe all these years. But there was no time for that now... Because I had a spaceship!

I evilly smirked down at the unconscious girl. "Heh heh heh heh... Everything went exactly according to plan."

I reflexively patted Katherinn down, hoping to find anything else she had. I pocketed her nine other 'Potion's, and a set of five similar-shaped vials filled with a sky-blue liquid. I'd ask about those later, if I met a Potions Expert or something. Or, more likely, a Merchant that also dealt in Potions.

I climbed up into the Gummi Ship and into its rather cramped cockpit, and grabbed both control sticks/handles, my thumbs stretching and preparing to press the single small red buttons atop each joystick. When I grabbed the handles, the roof closed back down, sealing me in. I noticed two carlike pedals at my feet, and I wasn't entirely sure what they did at the time. ...Meh, I'd figure them out as I flew.

Now that I was in the driver's seat, I looked at the Dashboard and I saw what looked like a Tablet-computer-sized Touch-Screen hidden in an indentation, right beneath the yellow blocky windscreen which, as I expected, really was a one-way screen that I could see out of. I

leaned forwards and tapped the touch screen, and it immediately activated. Huh, she must have left it on Sleep Mode.

The screen lit up a brilliant blue, like the blue of blueprints, as green angular menu boxes appeared on the screen, emblazoned with words written in white giving me options like 'Select Destination' and 'View Current Data'. Thankfully, the spaceship's interior didn't have the ridiculous 8-bit theme going, either. I guess she hadn't gotten around to recolouring the menus, because I actually liked the way this looked.

I chose 'Select Destination' with a loud ding, and the current menu faded away to be replaced by a graphical representation of the current world, and nearby planets. I saw my Earth in the center, and not too far off, there was something that looked like a large town built around the universe's smallest planet. I could actually see the buildings from orbit! I really hoped that was just an icon, and the real place was bigger.

I tapped on the town-planet, and a small info-box appeared next to it as the screen zoomed in to give me a better view of the world I'd selected. The town-world's name appeared to me in logo form, with a very short paragraph below telling me about the place.

TRAVERSE TOWN.

_A bustling, vibrant hub of trade and commerce, constantly visited by new adventurers looking for some action in their lives, new merchants looking to sell their wares and make a better life, as well as refugees from worlds destroyed by the Heartless looking to make a new __life._

LEVEL: 02.

VISIT WORLD? YES/CANCEL

Out of curiosity, I clicked Cancel, the screen zooming out. I selected my home planet, Earth, wondering what the magical aliens thought of my world.

EARTH, No. 9.

LEVEL: 00.

VISIT WORLD? YES/CANCEL

_One of the many imitations of the ancient planet known as Earth, this one may just be the largest and most boring. The original Earth was known for its impressive size, but this version of Earth doesn't really have anything to fill the space, other than the incredibly closed-minded indigenous people who ARE NOT to be talked to. They are not to be told about magic or the other worlds FOR A REASON. This world's level is too low, and so revealing yourself or magic or aliens to any of them is evil, and a Capital Offence of the highest order._

I frowned. So there was life out there on other planets, they were just forbidden from revealing ourselves to us. As I thought. ...Which begs the question: How did that idiot girl accidentally reveal what all the aliens in the universe were unwilling to reveal?

Then again, her Ship was tiny, she was physically weak(Her magic-enhanced jumping was all she had going for her, really), she couldn't run that fast, she had no weaponry skills or combat skills, she relied solely on rather small fireballs, and she was out cold after a blow to the head from an ordinary non-magical rock with a face I'd drawn onto it with a felt-tip pen, swung at her by me, an ordinary female human with no magic or Chosen-One status at all. Her weapon was pretty fancy, but just as Clara's awesome reformed-alcoholic sober-for-eight-years currently-sword-collecting Uncle used to say, even the world's fanciest weapon was worthless in the hands of a moron.

VISIT WORLD? YES/CANCEL

I pressed Cancel, and chose Traverse Town. Hey, the place's description sounded really awesome, so I was definitely going there. Maybe they'd sell some weaponry that could actually harm the Heartless? And hopefully, they weren't selling those weapons at too high a price.

TRAVERSE TOWN.

VISIT WORLD? YES/CANCEL.

I chose yes. I'd have to get my stolen ship repainted if I didn't want anyone recognizing it, and I'm not sure how much the weapons will cost, but... Who cares about that? It was time I went on an adventure. I'd figure things out when I got there, because now, it was time to go.

DESTINATION SELECTED.

AUTOPILOT ENGAGED.

BEGINNING JOURNEY.

My Gummi Ship slowly floated up out of the crater, strong winds around it whipping around and blowing leaves and twigs off nearby trees as my ship turned to face the stars overhead. It suddenly darted forwards, flying away from my home planet and setting out for whatever lay out there in the universe. As I saw my ship leave Earth's atmosphere and enter Space, stars all around me, I knew that my journey... no... my adventure had finally began.


	2. My Kind of Town

_ENTERING SUBSPACE. AUTOPILOT DISENGAGED._

"What?" I asked, confused, as I held on to the ship's controller's handles out of habit. I'd felt like I was just starting to get the hang of the controls, and then the autopilot disengaged and I actually had to drive/pilot the ship.

There was a flash of bright white light, and then, everything changed. "What?" I asked again, as the light got brighter and brighter, and then it suddenly turned off.

I wasn't flying through normal 'White dots on black background' space. I was flying through a multicolour mess, with asteroids bigger than my ship flying around, along with a lot of small but fast enemy ships. Odd brightly-coloured hollow outlines of 2-d shapes swirled around the subspace, along with blue dust clouds, and far-off stars that sparkled continuously, completely different from how real stars worked. "WHAT?!" I snapped.

They say that when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also. Well, this abyss was way more colourful than expected, but there was still something unsettling about it.

A potato-shaped asteroid the size of an eighteen-wheeler truck leisurely began spinning into my ship's path, and I decided to save my deep thoughts for later. _"Think later, shoot now!" _My Voice of Reason screamed.

I assumed the red buttons built into the handles, placed at the top, were the 'Fire' buttons. I pressed those buttons with my thumbs, and the ship's four cannons began humming with power, before launching a rapid-fire barrage of yellow laser blasts. The lasers repeatedly hit

the asteroid, not seeming to do any damage, until after about four seconds of firing when the asteroid suddenly smashed apart, leaving a small glowing thing behind that was magnetically pulled towards my ship and absorbed.

While I could use the controls in my hand to move about, my ship couldn't turn around. It just kept on moving forwards no matter where I was in my limited square-shaped field of movement, possibly a subspace forcefield thing. Annoyingly enough, my cannons were stuck firing forwards, so I had to move around and aim the whole ship if I wanted to destroy anything.

I pressed my right foot down on the right pedal, and my ship sped up. I took my foot off the right pedal, and it slowed down. It slowed down even more when I pressed the left pedal, but seemed unable to come to a complete stop while I was in subspace.

I sped up, not wanting to spend more time in this weird but strangely beautiful multicoloured zone than I had to. Swarms and packs of small but fast enemy ships appeared every so often, flying over me or around me as they took their sweet time getting into range and then slowly and inaccurately shot at me with their large, slow-flying lasers. I dodged their lasers, getting the hang of the controls, and I began shooting up everything I saw: Asteroids, enemy spaceships, everything. This ship seemed really good, and I got the sense that this ship was designed to travel through parts of subspace much more dangerous than this.

I saw a world in the distance, and as I got closer I saw that it was Traverse Town. And yes, the planet really did look like its icon. I wasn't sure how a planet could be that shape and size, so I satisfied my Voice of Reason by answering her 'How is that even possible?!' questions with 'Magic!', shutting her up as I reached for my ship's main screen. I selected the planet on my Main Screen, and chose the 'VISIT' option.

AUTOPILOT ENGAGED.

I removed my hands from my ship's controls, folded my arms beneath my chest, and smiled. "Am I the greatest pilot ever, or what?" I asked myself confidently, fully aware of how easy that strip of subspace felt compared to the power of my ship. To put it into videogame terms, I'd probably just used a level-4 ship on the first level, easily sailing through because of the disproportionate power levels rather than any skill of my own.

My ship automatically piloted itself to the planet, and I smiled. With a ship this good, at least the space-travelling part of my journey would be easy, at least until I got to the harder parts of subspace it was designed to travel through. Then again, it could still do with some more guns, and maybe some armour in case I do get hit. Contrary to how I act, I do know I'm not invincible. I just act that way, partly because it's fun, partly because confidence makes for a great leader, and mostly because it inspires, no, it dares people to prove you wrong. So they'll challenge you, and you can have them as enemies or rivals, depending on who it is.

Traverse Town was a very large and well-defended city inside a very high wall, and the only way in or out appeared to be either flying in using a ship, or going through the huge wooden double-door gate at the front of the town. Near the front, there was an enormous courtyard with a lot of room to land a spaceship on. My ship touched down in the courtyard, the two huge wooden doors right behind me, and automatically opened up.

I jumped out, and remembered how Katherinn said she was from Traverse Town. Therefore, people might notice if I was flying her ship around instead of her. Then I remembered this ship was made of cubes named Gummis, and could easily be fixed... I knew what had to be done.

I took my pet rock, Rocky DeBrea, out of my pocket, and began smashing it on my ship to try and break it. Nobody around town seemed to notice, or even care. "Stupid Ship!" I growled, breaking off chunks, trying to change the ship's build and design by breaking parts off. "Why is this ship so dang SLOW?!"

When I was done, the ship was no longer the blocky bullet-shaped ship it once was. Now, it was but a blocky mess, with four completely-unharmed cannons and a lot of missing cubes on the sides and roof, now lying on the ground as debris. Suddenly, the cubes were re-absorbed into the ship as energy, surprising me. "Huh. Well... okay then." I said uncertainly, glad that this meant nobody could steal my ship parts.

With the danger of my ship being recognized long-gone, I put my rock back in my pocket and I happily looked around town.

Despite being advertised as a town for refugees, the place actually looked really nice. On the far left and right of the courtyard, I saw the wooden tables and chairs of an outdoors cafe. In front of me, I saw steps that led up towards the next level of town, and the path split into two in front of what looked like the biggest shop in town. On either side of the building, I saw two paths wide enough to drive three trucks through at once side-by-side fork outwards before making a right-angled turn, both paths going towards the rest of town but taking different routes to get there.

I decided to do some exploring, and so I walked up the stairs and took the right path, jogging along until I saw another large stone wall with a wooden gate. Multiple gates? Whoever built this town REALLY didn't want the town falling to the forces of the Heartless. I knocked

on the gates, but they seemed locked. "Wonderful." I said sarcastically. I guess I'd need to go get someone with the key... who'd have the key? That huge shop back there, people probably go there every day to buy adventuring supplies, the shopkeeper probably overheard all kinds of gossip. Same goes for those 'Cafes' back at the courtyard, with the wooden tables outside. If anyone knew anything, it'd be the shopkeeper, the bartender, or one of the waiters/waitresses.

Great, now I knew who to go ask. It was time to go, and... interrogate.

* * *

First on the list was the most likely option: the huge shop. I entered, and I saw... a lot.

The shop was huge, about the size of a large house, and it had two levels and two doors: The main door I'd just entered through, and a door over on the lower floor that led into one of the side streets. A small wooden staircase connected the two levels, but I could probably jump down to the lower level and then climb back up to the upper level if I wanted to. All over the walls, and in display cases on the floor I saw those fridge-freezers full of ice cream you see in supermarkets, except instead of ice cream, they had weapons. So many weapons!

I looked around the room with an expression of awe and wonder on my face. Perhaps this is what is meant by the expression 'I feel like a kid at Xmas'! This was my new favourite store of all time! Everywhere I looked, there was just so many weapons! They were all coloured strangely, but they were still real weapons! I saw standard weapon like longswords, broadswords, those one-point-five-handed swords whose names I couldn't say in public, katanas, every other type of sword I knew of and a few that I didn't recognise, small Circular Shields the size and shape of a bin lid, Curved-rectangular Tower Shields the shape of a bent playing card big enough to cover my whole body, nunchuks with metal chains and steel handles, regular-sized paper fans, regular-sized folding cloth fans, regular-sized folding cloth fans with hidden blades in the handle, chainsaws, whips, metal bo-staffs/staves, harpoon launchers, ordinary wooden longbows with a white bowstring and quivers full of

wooden steel-tipped arrows, ordinary wooden crossbows with a black bowstring and similarly normal arrows, chakrams, sharpened windmill blades, and every possible variety and variation of knife made of every possible material except for steel, regular-looking musical instruments with built-in blades, and all manner of explosives. Sticks of dynamite, bomblets, plastic explosives, blocks of C-4, rocket launchers, and cartoonishly huge bombs the size of a bowling ball with a fuse sticking out of the top and the word 'Bomb' painted onto the front in big red letters.

And then, there was the stuff I hadn't seen before: Staffs tipped with beautiful glowing crystals surrounded by Dreamcatcher-esque designs, huge well decorated seven-foot swords that'd probably take multiple people to carry, swords with guns built in that came in shotgun-longsword, revolver-shortsword, rifle-rapier and minigun-broadsword variants, enormous folding fans as big as me with heavy metal slats and sheets of metal between the fabric, huge six-foot katanas with chainsaw teeth running down the blade, nunchuks with swords for handles, nunchucks with chainsaws for handles, nunchuks with nunchuks for handles, nunchuks with nuns for handles(Tiny lawn gnomes that looked like nuns), nunchuks with model gophers for handles, ornately-designed musical instruments that looked beautiful and fancy while not affecting the instrument's acoustics or playing style at all, chainsaws mounted upon lances, steel spears with rotatable metal drills at the tip, large steampunk-esque rifles with a lot of bronze cogs and steam valves visible, fans made entirely out of knives, bullwhips made to look like snakes(complete with the whip's head being a snake's head with an open mouth and exposed teeth), katana handles with lasers for blades, chainsaws with lasers for blades, javelins with attached explosives, harpoon guns rigged to fire spears, harpoon guns rigged to fire spears tipped with working steam-powered drills, harpoon guns rigged to fire chainsaws, harpoon guns rigged to fire , and what appeared to be rocket launchers that fired low-yield nuclear explosives. Someone had even gone to the trouble of painting yellow smiley faces onto all three of the nuclear explosives inside the launcher. I wasn't sure whether to find that amusing or strange. Then again, they may have been that way before they shopkeeper bought them. This place was a weapons shop, not a blacksmith or weapons manufacturer. And what a weapons shop it was!

This place was absolutely beautiful! It was like a museum of all the weapons in the known universe, except even better because these weapons were actually for sale!

I heard a man laugh. "You really like weapons, huh?" he asked. I looked at him, and- woah, he was hot. He was tall, strong, and manly, with short blonde hair and a five-o'clock shadow of a beard. He wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans, baggy blue pants tucked into boots, and some kind of necklace on a thin string, I couldn't tell what it was. There was some kind of red stick in his mouth, I got the feeling that he wanted to smoke, but couldn't because the town probably had rules against such things.

"I don't just like weapons, I love weapons!" I giggled giddily, grinning wildly, unable to take my eyes off his body. I'd never seen anyone that hot back home! Oh, yes, this was DEFINITELY my new favourite shop of all time!

"You should have seen the look on your face! You walked into this room like a hunter tracking down its prey, then you saw my stuff, and boom! Suddenly, you're like a kid entering a toy store for the first time!" He chuckled. "The look takes years off you."

"Well..." I said, blushing. "I've never seen any weapon stores this great before!"

"Ha! I like you, kid." He said, and the tiniest fangirlish squeal escaped from my grinning mouth. "Is it weird that you're actually the oldest kid to come to my shop all week? Anyway, I'm Cid Highwind. This used to be an Accessory Shop, but as you can tell..." He said, extending his muscular arms out, gesturing to the shop's wares. "I expanded."

"Accessories? Like, bracelets, bobby pins, hairbands, necklaces, and lame girly stuff like thar?" I asked, imagining this shop full of pink hairbands and hairpins tipped with plastic flowers and lame girly stuff like that. Then I imagined him wearing those things, and my grin grew wider.

"No, not- heh, '_accessories_'... **Accessories!**" He said, saying the first word as if it was a joke, and putting extra emphasis on the second word as if it was cooler, and the change in emphasis somehow made a huge difference. "Keychains, Sword sheaths, Sword chains, Quivers, Ammo bags! Stuff that changes and modifies your current weapon, to make it bigger! Better! Faster! Stronger!" He paused, then sighed. "...Anyway, I had to expand my shop. Too many refugees were coming here, with no weapons to put an Accessory on!"

I smiled, seeing my chance. I didn't understand how an accessory could change a weapon, but I just assumed it was magic. Or very advanced science, but most likely magic. "That's me!" I declared happily. "I'm a refugee, too! I just arrived here! I need weapons, and light armour, and I need to rebuild my ship to make it suck less."

"Oh, you're that girl who tore her Gummi Ship apart after landing! I heard about you! Heh, I could hear you from here!" He laughed.

"Yeah... my ship kinda sucks." I said embarrassedly, turning my head away and blushing. "It's probably not as good as one of your ships."

_...Wait, what? _I thought. _He knew I arrived? But how? I didn't see any cameras on the way in... are there spies out there? Or ninjas? Or ninja spies?_

"Heh." Cid Highwind chuckled again. "You know, I've been out of the business for a while, but my friend's nephews know these two guys. Best Gummi Ship mechanics I've ever seen... except for me, of course. ...I'm just kidding. They're better with Gummi Ships, I'm better with real ships."

"Sweet!" I said, leaning forwards excitedly. "Who are they, and where can I find them?"

"They're called Chip and Dale, and I have no idea where they are. Those three nephews of his should get here in about half an hour, so buy a weapon, go get some armour, and come back then."

I had absolutely no idea who they were, but I noticed the _Chip and Dale/Chip 'n' Dale/Chippendale_ pun. Poor guys. I hate it when parents give pun-names like that to their twin kids. The books said it damages the kids, their mental state, and their self esteem, and it prevents their growth as separate individuals. I crouched slightly so he'd be a little more taller than me, then I looked up at Cid and asked him, "Could you please help me find a weapon?"

"Heh, sure. Whaddya want?" He asked me.

"Well, I was thinking... how about one of those Sword-Gun things?" I offered. "They appear to have a good balance between close-range and long-range attacks. I'm good at changing my tactics to suit the situation, so I'd want something that can be used in as many situations as possible."

"A Gunblade, huh?" He asked, surprised. "Weird, not many kids go for those. They usually ask for a normal sword, or a fake keyblade, or a staff, or a sword way too big for them to handle properly."

"Well, I like guns, and swords, and stuff that blows up." I said firmly, smiling. "I choose the Gunblade."

"Alright, I'll go get one from the storehouse down below." He said, pressing a button beneath his desk. A large shimmering orb appeared atop his desk, moulding into the shape of-

It had -describe gunblade here. standard-model low-level. green

revolver/shortsword, . Fires ?-Caliber explosive rounds. Holds six at once, and never runs out of ammo. To regenerate more ammo, just spin the barrel, it'll do the rest.

"Awesome! How much?" Iasked.

"Hm... how does 1,000 Munny sound?" He asked me.

"...Sorry, what?" I asked, tilting my head. Did he say 'Money'?

"Munny, the universal currency of the universe?" He asked as if it was obvious. "A decent meal around here will cost at least 1500 Munny!"

"Uh..." I said, panicking slightly, trying to think of something. Then I thought of something, and calmed down. "Hey, if I sold some stuff, could I use the money to buy that weapon?"

"Depends on what you're selling." He said carefully, folding his arms and looking down at the desk, looking not very interested at all. I knew merchants, I knew that trick, and that was just an act. As my grandfather used to say: It's not about what the goods are worth... it's about what the goods are worth to the buyer.

I reached into my pockets, and pulled out two potions I'd stolen from Katherinn, one of each. A green one, and a blue one.

Cid picked them both up and looked at them appraisingly, holding them up to the light. The Voice of Opportunity within me screamed at me, saying, "Quick, while his hands are full of potions! Grab the gun, and run!"

"No way!" I thought back at it. "After I grab and run, he could drop the potions and grab a weapon, and kick my butt or shoot it off before I even left the store! And if I got out of the store without getting shot or cut to pieces, he'd chase me down and blow me up while I was running back to my ship! Plus, does this town have armed guards? I didn't see any, but they may be ninja guards, or magic invisible guards! And would my ship even be able to fly in its current condition? Besides, what about the clothes shop? I still need armour, and I wouldn't be able to buy that while running from a local militia of invisible ninjas!"

"Hmm..." Cid Highwind said, looking at two vials. "You've got a standard-issue Potion, and an ordinary Elixir. Potion restores Health, Elixir restores energy and Mana. I'll give you 100 per Potion, and 150 per Elixir."

"150 per Potion, 200 per elixir." I said firmly. I was great at bartering. The Farmer's Market back home both hates me, and has a grudging respect for me and my haggling skills. Besides, I usually pickpocket or steal one or two items when I go there anyway, so I always turn a profit when I visit no matter how many shopkeepers kick me out. Hey, if the farmers back home weren't all grumpy old men that were rarely willing to budge on price despite still turning a profit, I wouldn't have to steal from them to gather food for my roommate and I. ...By the way, how was Clara doing, anyway?

"No." He said firmly, showing that any attempt at bartering was completely out of the question. "100 per Potion, 150 per Elixir."

"150 per Potion and 200 per Elixir, or no deal." I said, firmer. Yeah, right! Merchants LOVED to barter.

"Heh." Cid Highwind chuckled, folding his arms. "130 per potion, 170 per elixir." He offered.

"140 per potion, 180 per elixir." I counteroffered, folding my arms beneath my chest.

"Heh, you're the first girl I've met who's actually tried haggling with me." Cid said. "Most give up after the first try."

"So you're going to respect my awesome haggling skills and agree with my prices?" I asked hopefully.

"Heh, no." He chuckled. "130 per potion, 170 per elixir."

"How much would it cost me to buy more Potions or Elixirs?" I asked.

"200 for a Potion, 250 for an Elixir. They used to be cheaper, but... there are more refugees coming in every week, and most of them feel like getting back into the adventuring business, fighting to get stronger so they're more likely to survive, or going out for 'Vengeance'. Increased demand, same supply, you know how it is. I can't have every kid in town buying ten Potions with their pocket Munny in one visit any more, not when there are kids out there risking their lives."

"I understand." I said, nodding. "But I am going to be one of those adventurers, risking my life. I have no money, no weapon, no armour, my ship needs repairs... I have nothing. I only have these Potions and Elixirs, I found them when I was running from the Heartless. I need to

sell them at a good price, so I can afford weapons, armour, ship repairs... otherwise, I'm going to leave town, armed with nothing but my bare hands, and I'm going to fight the Heartless!"

"What?!" He snapped. "You'll be killed! Haven't you noticed you can't even touch most Heartless?!"

"Yes, I have." I said certainly. "But I'm a genius, I'll figure something out. Plus, I'm so awesome, maybe if I punch the Heartless hard enough, I'll eventually be able to hurt them! Perhaps I could fire lasers at them, made of pure awesomeness!"

"Alright, alright." He sighed, looking down for a moment. The stick in his mouth started to move slightly, as if he was automatically sucking in a relaxing breath out of something he wished was a lit cigarette. He seemed to be struggling internally on something, as if he was weighing up making a profit against saving my life. I stayed quiet, trying to read his unreadable expression, letting him think. I bet he really wished he could smoke right to be honest, with that body, he was already smoking!

He seemed to make up his mind, and he looked back at me. "Tell you what: I'll give you 140 per Potion, and 180 per Elixir. Selling both of them will get you 320. That's still not enough to buy this Gunblade, but you could buy that Longbow over there, with the white string." He pointed over to the ordinary wooden longbow I'd seen before, with the quiver of ten

arrows next to it. "It's only 120 for the bow and quiver. It generates its own arrows through magic, and holds up to ten at once. When you've fired them all, it'll generate ten more. Then, you can use it to protect yourself as you go into the Heartless-infested Second District, okay?"

"'District'?" I asked.

"You really are new here, aren't you?" He chuckled, but slightly more sympathetically this time, as if his heart wasn't really in that chuckle. "This town was built for refugees, with one purpose in mind: Not falling to the Heartless the same way everyone else's world did. So, the terrain is great for defence: Uneven, tons of high ground for defenders, and big streets for big defending armies and bigger machines to get through. And, if big Heartless do get in, we have enough room to move around and dodge their attacks."

"That's great, and if I ever build myself a Town or Castle or Castle Town, I'll keep this place in mind, but... 'District'?" I pressed.

"Oh, right. Heh." He chuckled. "Well, you've seen the big doors and bigger walls everywhere, right? Completely impenetrable, not even Ghosts can get through them. This town is divided into Districts, with people and shops all over the place. If the Heartless get into one area, it can be closed off to civilians. It's okay for shopkeepers, they tend to be pretty well armed, same for adventurers, but... not everyone is armed."

"I understand... Some might not want to pick up a weapon, being reluctant to fight. Maybe they're too cowardly to-"

"There is nothing cowardly about wanting to survive!" He snapped, outraged.

"Right, sorry, poor choice of words." I said. Holy crap, he was terrifying when he was mad. "I meant, they'd want to stay at home, and survive at home, and never pick up a weapon again. Maybe they had to pick up a weapon to defend themselves as they ran, and so they mentally equate picking up or even purchasing or owning any weaponry with fighting again, and being in danger?"

"Probably." He shrugged.

"Well, good thing I'm not like that. Hey, if I did have enough money for the Gunblade, could I buy it for 750?"

"Sure, but that's as low as I'm willing to go on that." He said firmly.

"Thanks. So... why am I going into the dangerous Heartless-infested Second District with nothing but a simple wooden longbow to protect me?"

"There's a clothes shop, run by a guy calling himself the Mad Hatter. He's a few screws short of a toolbox, but he sells the best clothes and armour in town. Never cared much for the stuff, myself, but you should be able to buy yourself something cheap with what you've got left, okay?"

"Sounds good. So, I'll sell you my Potion for 140 and Elixir for 180..." I said, with a thoughtful look on my face. Finally, I had him! A manic, gleeful grin spread across my

face as I reached into my pockets and placed handful after handful of vials on the counter. "I'll sell them all, so I'll sell you ten Potions for 1400 and five Elixirs for 900, giving me a grand total of 2000 Munny! After buying that Gunblade for 900, I'll have 1400 left, and I can use that to buy some good armour, and some ship repairs! I'll begin my adventure well-armed and well-prepared! I'll come back here whenever I want more weapons, or if I pick up any Friends or Companions who don't already have their own weapons, okay?"

"You... you tricked me!" He said, stunned that someone actually managed to trick him, more than a little bit impressed.

"I said, 'These vials are all I have'. I didn't say how many of those vials I had." I giggled.

"Oh, is that so?" He chuckled, and then sighed in resignation. "Well, you've got me. Besides, you need the money. A girl like you, pulling stunts like that on guys as strong as me... you're gonna make a lot of enemies like that."

"I know." I said with a grin. "I plan on making even more friends. Besides, you aren't going to attack me. I did tell you I'm a genius, right? You know, I've noticed a few things about you."

"Oh?" He said skeptically. "Do tell."

_Sweet, now's my chance!_ I thought. I smiled, and said to him, "You've got that red stick in your mouth, and I can tell by the way you hold it there: You want to smoke, but you can't smoke here. You're not originally from this place, you escaped and saved a few people from your home, but you sometimes feel like that wasn't enough. You're a really good mechanic, and I'd bet good money that you built your own Gummi Ship to get to this place, but circumstances forced you to work in an Accessory Shop, selling Weapon Accessories to kids, children who reminded you of the ones back in your home. You expanded to accommodate new adventurers... you'd only do that if you cared about the kids that come here daily, buying hundreds upon hundreds of weak potions and thinking it'll make them invincible. You aren't dressed the way you used to dress, but you refuse to buy a new outfit from any

local shops because you don't want this place to change you any more than it already has. Finally, you're right-handed, you're used to wearing goggles, and you agreed to my price because you can sense something about me. Not a power, like some kinda glowy laser-y

light-themed explosion-filled godmode of a Chosen One power, but something better, something more useful. I'm intelligent, perceptive, good with people,and very good with money, rather different from your usual pre-teen can't-tell-a-nodaichi-from-a-talwar clientele. I'm a real leader, a real tactician, a real commander. I'm going to do more than just lead a band of adventurers around, I'm going to do great things."

"Heh... Heh heh..." He chuckled... And then burst out into full-on laughter, bending forwards and backwards as he laughed, slapping his table and everything. The loud, unrestrained laughter of a man far older than his body, a man who hadn't laughed properly in a very long time. I liked the sound, and I couldn't help joining in. Oh, what a sight we must have been, a man that looked to be in his late thirties laughing that way with a girl in her late teens.

"Hah hah... heh... You're right, kid." He said, smiling. He looked really good when he smiled.

"Hee hee, I know!" I said with a grin. "Also, I don't know why you want to smoke... after all, you're already smoking!"

"HA! That's a good one, I need to use that the next time I see a lady that smokes."

"Well, good luck with the ladies." I said, deciding now was the time. "So... I'll sell my Potions and Elixirs for 2100, and buy a Gunblade for 750?"

"For you? Alright. Come back when you need any more weaponry, okay?" He asked, pressing a button beneath his desk. My small pile of Potions and Elixirs was turned into light and absorbed by the desk, and it was replaced by a pile of small prismatic glass diamonds that defied gravity and balanced on their tips, with some larger Munny diamonds in there as well.

"Heh, you bet!" I said, grinning. "So, is that... Munny?" I asked.

"Yeah. It's kinda like crystallised energy and life force. You can get it by destroying Heartless. It's kind of a way the universe's merchants, chefs, and other non-fighters can help out with the Heartless-fighting cause."

"Wait... We're trading using the internal organs of parasitic eldritch abominations as a global currency?!" I asked in disbelief.

"Yeah." He shrugged.

My grin grew even wider. "This is my kind of town!" I said cheerfully.

"I like you, kid. Have I said that already?"

"Yeah, but you can't say it enough times!" I declared.

I reached a hand down to pick up one of the larger Munny diamonds in the center of the pile and as soon as I touched one, they were all magnetically pulled towards me and absorbed into my body. I could literally feel myself becoming richer. "...How?" I asked.

"It's so thieves can't pickpocket you. ...Unless they have spells for sapping Munny. Anyway, it's really so you don't have to carry sacks of the stuff around."

"Anyway," Cid sighed, looking at the Gunblade on the desk. "I've given you your 1200 Munny as change, so take your Gunblade and go get some decent armour. You'll find the Second District behind this shop, take the path on the right and go straight until you find the huge reinforced wooden door. There _are_ guards posted at the door, they just hide where they can't be seen... partly so they can't be taken out quickly, but mostly so they can nap on the job. Just get their attention, flash your gunblade, and tell 'em Cid Highwind sent you to see the Mad Hatter. They know me, they'll let you through."

"Thanks!" I said to Cid Highwind, picking up my new Gunblade. It was a lot lighter than I expected, it was only about as heavy as a Cricket Bat. "Wow, this is way lighter than I was expecting."

"What, did you think the magic-reinforced light steel and magical exploding regenerating bullets were actually going to be heavy?"

"Not heavy, just... heavier than it is." I shrugged.

"Well, one last thing: This town has some sort of protective spell put on it, so shooting someone point-blank in the face with that thing won't do anything except annoy them. Same goes for hitting them with the blade, or deciding to use the tables and chairs outside as target

practice. You can practice all you like out there, and nobody will mind. The townsfolk are used to seeing kids taking practice swings with their weapons, even in other people's homes. But try not to hit any guards, okay? Somehow, their weapons still work. Also, don't go round picking fights; 'cause if you both agree to the fight, your weapons can hurt each other. They can't kill, only hurt, but still. Best to be on the safe side, you know?"

"Thanks. Wait, one last thing... You mentioned 'Fake Key Blades'. What are those?"

"Oh, Fake Keyblades, they're something the forges have started making. See, a few years ago, there was this hero. He had a keyblade, and he saved the universe. Suddenly, every kid wants to grow up to be like him, and every pre-teen wannabe adventurer wants their own keyblade. So we've started making and selling copies of his keyblades, usually made out of metal, even though his was made out of solidified light. They're a pretty good seller with our younger crowd... even though they're not that good if they're not the real thing. Without the whole solidified-light thing they've got goin' on, they're nothing more than fancy-looking carved-up swords. To be honest, big swords are kinda worthless if they're not heavy. All the unwieldiness of a big sword, without the weight and chopping power that comes with your sword being heavier than a car. Honestly, you're better off with just about anything else."

"In that case, I'll stick with my Gunblade." I said, smiling. I bowed respectfully, and he chuckled and jokingly did the same. "Well, it was nice meeting you. Bye, Cid!"

"Take care, kid!" Cid Highwind called out after me as I left the building the way I'd came in.

Wow, that went a lot better than I'd expected. I'd gained a weapon, some money - or should that be, Munny? - and figured out where I'm going next. Second District, here I come.

* * *

As I walked through the gate's imposing double doors, I couldn't help admiring the architectural skill of whoever built this place. It looked like something out of a Victorian-era City or Town, but cleaner and nicer. Still, I noticed the high walls, the large reinforced doors, and a few barely-visible guards hiding in the shadows. They must have been new, since I could actually almost see them. Whoever built this place wanted to create the world's most beautiful and easy-to-defend fort, and as far as I'm concerned, they succeeded. This

place was for the last survivors of dying worlds to 'Turtle Up', as I called it when gaming. Build as many defensive fortifications as you can, and try to survive and stall for time. Normally, when someone Turtled Up, it was because they were either about to try something,

resting, planning something, or they'd lost almost all their hope except for the final desire to survive as long as they can. Not to live, just to survive.

Still, this place was beautiful! The lampposts, the large yards and wide open spaces, the abundance of staircases and higher levels. I loved it!

Still, I probably wouldn't find any teammates or followers here. I'd either find Civilians, who'd just want to be left at home, or other Adventurers, who wanted to go on their own adventures.

I stopped walking, and suddenly realized what I'd just thought. Teammates, Followers, Companions, anything or anyone I could take with me, so I could return to my home world and save it from the Heartless invasion.

How was that going, anyway?

...How was I supposed to get news out here, anyway? I hadn't seen any TVs on the way in. I'd seen a few mailboxes, but that was about it. Then again, a Victorian-era-themed survivalist fort for refugees probably wouldn't have televisions. They'd want to encourage bonds of friendship between people, so they could be friends forever if they were trapped underground or in their easy-to-rebuild cottage houses.

On the ground in front of me, I saw black dots start to form. I tensed up, ready to attack. I heard the odd distorted sound of moving shadow, the only thing I could hear. Even the peaceful tune that had been stuck in my head was gone, now replaced by an all-encompasing silence.

The black dots grew, and around five of those accursed Black Ants crawled up from the ground. Three new creatures suddenly appeared above them, and at first, I thought they were floating tiny yellow one-foot-tall traffic cones. Then I noticed that their pointed tops

were hats, and there were tiny heads hidden under those hats with glowing yellow eyes. Sparks of electricity crackled around them, like floating miniature lightning mages.

The world around me was completely silent, apart from the sounds of these foul creatures. I couldn't have that. I selected a song at random from my mental library, and began to nod my head as the loud, brutal sounds of instrumental death metal screamed through my mind and metaphorically set my blood boiling.

"FINALLY!" I yelled. "Are you ready for some DEATH?!" I roared, taking my Gunblade off my back and pointing it at them with a completely straight arm, as if it was the world's biggest handgun.

I aimed for the 'Shadow' Heartless in the middle of the group, the creature I once thought was called a Black Ant, one of the foul creatures I had come to hate so strongly.

I looked at the oversized black ant, which stared at me like a confused predator, uncertain if it should attack or not.

I pulled the trigger, and my Gunblade fired an explosive bullet about the size of a cola can right at the center of the Heartless group. The three Yellow Operas flew off in different directions, and the first and fifth Heartless on the far left and right sunk into the shadows and slipped away. My bullet hit the center Heartless right in its head, and it was engulfed in a small explosion.

The explosion died down, revealing the three Heartless, still creepily moving from side to side. My Gunblade's Libra enchantment showed me tiny green health bars over each Heartless, each one about 40% full.

"Oh COME ON!" I yelled. Back home, an explosion like that would take away a lot more than approximately 60% of something's life away!

I looked around, wondering where the other Heartless had gotten to. I saw the Yellow Operas trying to blindside me, balls of lightning crackling at the tips of their heads. I sprinted forwards towards the Shadows I'd shot, letting the Yellow Operas fire their lightning magic at an empty space.

Locking eyes with the center Heartless, I held my gunblade to the side with both hands like a baseball bat, and I swung.

My blade passed right through, again. Great, these things really could only be harmed by fire. Perhaps it would be prudent, as well as practical and incredibly awesome, to weld a flamethrower onto my Gunblade the way one might put a bayonet sword on their rifle?

Then I looked at the Heartless's health bar, and noticed how the black ant only had the tiniest sliver of health left. Great, so my slashes can hurt them. Good to know.

I felt two stabbing pains in my back, as the two Heartless Shadows from earlier lunged at my back and clawed it, scratching and raking all the way down before shuffling away. The defensive enchantments on my clothing prevented their sharp claws from tearing my skin, but it still hurt a lot. I turned around, hate on my face, and lunged straight ahead at the attacking Heartless now on my right with a forwards one-handed thrust, blade turned up, followed by a powerful directly-upwards slash that would have cut the ant in half if it was solid. 20% health remaining? I pounced forwards and brought my sword blade-down on it's head, as if I was wielding an axe.

My blade sunk through the black ant, my sword leaving a glowing trail behind through the crevice I was making in its head. My sword sliced through it completely and my sword hit the ground, and everything paused for one dramatic moment before the Shadow Heartless disintegrated into a black cloud of smoke. I grinned. So they CAN be destroyed!

Then I grimaced, and stepped back. Gods, that smelled awful. Absolutely sickening. If that was what darkness smelled like, it was no wonder most villains had weird-looking noses.

Then, I noticed some glowing orbs where the Heartless had been- a few green spheres, and some white diamonds. I reached with my left hand to pick them up, and they jumped towards me as if magnetized. They were absorbed into my armour, the green orbs regenerating my armour's protective enchantments while the white diamonds gave me the semi-euphoric feeling I usually got when I gained more money.

A searing pain right in back between the shoulderblades, like a bee sting up to eleven, alerted me to the fact that I was still on a battlefield. I ran forwards until I was about seven feet away from the Heartless, I heard two more strike the area where I was standing, and then I turned on my heel and glared at the Heartless. "Come at me!" I roared, pointing my gunblade straight up as if stabbing the sky.

A Heartless Shadow lunged at me, and I swung my sword down, the glowing trail leaving a faint crescent shape in the air as I turned the blade in the middle of it like a key, and slammed the Shadow to the ground. 50% health remaining, and it was stunned for a second. I performed a quick upwards diagonal slash, followed by a downwards slash that left an X-shape behind in the air. The Heartless disintegrated, becoming another black cloud and pile of glowing orbs. I absorbed them, and looked around for one of the Electric Yellow Flying Things to shoot.

There, right behind me. I turned to face it and leapt to the right in slow motion, yelling and firing bullet after bullet from my Gunblade as the metal revolver-piece rotated after each shot. "AAAAAAAAA!"

I hit The Annoying Floating Yellow Thing right in its center, blowing it back a foot in the air and taking 40% of it's health away. The second bullet struck it in its face, destroying it and reducing it to a dark cloud and a handful of green orbs and white gems, which fell to the ground... and an odd-looking glowing pink Valentine's-heart, which floated up uselessly like some kind of distress flare. Not really the most terrifying of distress flares, but I contemplated shooting it down anyway.

"AAAAA-Ow." I muttered as I landed on the hard stone floor, right on my side, the cool slow-motion effect finishing. A Shadow Heartless lunged at my midsection, I rolled away and got to my knees before firing at its head. It disintegrated after one shot, it must have been

the Shadow Heartless I'd already damaged. I decided to worry about reinforcements later, because I needed to focus on winning this fight first.

I got up, and saw that I had three Shadow Heartless left, and two Annoying Floating Things. I was panting, and starting to tire from all this running and rolling and adrenaline. I needed to destroy these things, they attacked my homeworld... They were probably slaughtering the ones I loved right now, as the police and military fired their now-worthless guns at them.

With a mighty downwards swipe of my hand, I spun the revolver barrel section of my Gunblade, as if it was a regular revolver. A yellow glow came from the bullet chambers, and I could tell from the slight increase in weight(And the Libra enchantment outright telling me) that I'd reloaded my Gunblade. Yay, magic weaponry!

I raised my Gunblade to fire at a Floating Yellow Thing that floated too close to me, but it charged itself with lightning and charged at me slowly before I could fire. I turned my blade to the side, putting my palm flat against the flat part for added support, and I blocked

the Yellow Thing's charge. It didn't feel like it was that strong. Heck, I think I've had pet dogs pounce onto me with more force than that. Still, I wasn't taking any chances. I pushed the Yellow Thing back, then gave it a quick horizontal slash, followed by a horizontal slash in the other direction. The Yellow Thing disintegrated into another dark cloud, and the same orbs, gems, and flying heart-beacon flew away from the cloud.

I aimed my Gunblade at the final Floating Yellow Thing and fired two bullets, each bullet hitting and taking away around 60% health. It disin- It died, and it did the same thing the other Floating Yellow Things did when I killed them.

I spun my Gunblade's barrels and reloaded. That only left three Heartless Shadows, scuttling about like rats. Annoying little dog-sized rat-ant-things. ...Wow, as far as unspeakable eldritch horrors went, these things were actually pretty lame. I could only hope I'd end up facing off against bigger and badder foes, not just mindless worker-ant drones.

I fired at the one in the center, hitting them all in the blast, destroying them all after two shots.

It was over.

Finally, it was over.

And now that it was over, I realized just how tired I was. I panted, as the metal music in my head faded away and was replaced by that same soothing jazzy piano-and-something-else tune this place always made me think of.

My gunblade vanished in a flash of light, and was absorbed back into me. It's official: I love magic weaponry.

I looked around the now-empty area, and sighed. That fight took longer than I would have liked. Once again, I thought about trying to get some teammates or companions, ones who could help me fight the Heartless. And, someone who could tell me more about these Heartless.

I'd got my Weapon, and now I wanted Armour. I doubted I'd ever allow myself to get hit, but I wanted to be on the safe side anyway.

* * *

I entered the clothing store, and frowned. I backed away slowly, left the shop, and looked at the building from the outside. I entered again, and... huh. Yep, it was still like that.

The Mad Hatter's Clothing Emporium didn't just flagrantly fly in the face of sensible architectural design, the laws of physics, and common sense. It flagrantly flew in the faces of those things, while flying backwards and wearing nothing more than polka-dot underwear and a pink T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase 'Thou shalt take thy pantaloons off' in big shining golden letters.

The ceiling was high, impossibly high, at least seven storeys up even though the building's exterior looked to be no more than three at the most. Every wall was covered in long metal-poles that stuck out like spikes, a clothes-hanger on each one, with all sorts of fantastical outfits on each peg. Beige plastic mannequins six feet tall with creepy featureless faces all dressed like knights, princesses, kings, ninja, pirates, superheroes, spacemen and cowboys all wandered around the building in groups of two, as if they were guards that were hired to patrol the building. I saw immobile stone statues that looked like winged humans, possibly angels, but very shy ones that kept hiding their eyes and faces from view in a way that made them appear to be crying. Except... every time I blinked, or looked away and then looked back, the stone statues appeared to have come to life, moved, and frozen again by the time I looked at them once more. Strange... perhaps these stone statues weren't supposed to move, so they froze only when people looked at them?

Above my head, I saw several catwalks and walkways that made up the other floors of the building, and mannequins and shy stone statues patrolling the other floors. I wondered how I was supposed to reach the outfits on the higher shelves, then I looked down at the ground and noticed certain sections of the bright yellow floor had orange circles on them around eight feet wide, elevated about one inch above the ground. Unusual. ...Yes, I entered a clothes store that was bigger on the inside and had living mannequins and statues for security guards, and I found myself questioning the odd floor circle things most of all.

In fact, the store seemed to be magically enchanted to be several times bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, the guards never seemed to run into a wall no matter how far in one direction they walked, and perhaps most unusual of all... There was only one of each outfit. No duplicates, no extras, no plus-size models, and no annoyingly tiny baby outfit versions of regular clothing. The store had one of each outfit on display... then again, this could just be the merchandise on display. It was entirely possible that there was a hidden basement warehouse or storeroom beneath this one, full of mile-high stacks of boxes, all filled with identical but differently-sized copies of the clothing around me. Or, considering magic was involved, the extra merchandise may have been stored in a pocket dimension. ...Actually, magic was involved, so the extra supplies may have been stored in the shop owner's actual pockets, cartoon-style.

I saw a Moving Mannequin, an attractive female statue wearing a pink leather corset with white lace, a long and very wide pink and white vertical-striped skirt that came down to her knees, a pink belt with two black katanas in pink sheaths, and a long flowing cape with silver and pink vertical stripes at her back. She stepped on one of those orange circles, which sank into the floor with a resounding click that reminded me of a button on a Games Console. She calmly walked into the orange button's center as if everything was completely normal, and

then she waited patiently for eight seconds.

With a sudden and loud pneumatic hiss like a bus tyre deflating, the orange section of the floor suddenly shot up as if fired from a cannon, rising faster than any safe elevator should and stopping suddenly when it got to the second floor. A column of steel connected

the platform to a hole in the floor, and to me it looked like a large and long pin stuck into a board. The Moving Mannequin wandered off, the platform sank back down at the same alarming speed that could probably squish anyone standing under it, and I realised that whoever built this place certainly wasn't following any safety regulations... but he or she was certainly having fun with it.

I heard the pitter-patter of something quickly running up to me from far away, it reminded me of those Heartless Shadows. I drew my Gunblade, crouching down and getting ready to turn and fire at whatever I had to, no matter what direction it came from.

The sound got closer, and louder. I looked around, still crouched, my gunblade pointed in front of me as if I was looking down its gun-sight.

The sound got closer, and closer. and then suddenly stopped. I did a quick spin, but I didn't see anything.

"Hello!" A cheerful voice shouted, coming from right behind me.

I screamed, spun around, and unloaded the entire clip of my Gunblade, all six magic exploding bullets, right at the source of the sound. It looked like something really short, so

it must have been a Heartless. ...One that could talk. ...Oh kuso, I'd just shot a living garden gnome. What is he was a guard? Would the other guards attack me to avenge him? I really didn't want to die at the hands of a living plastic mannequin wearing a pink corset.

The smoke cleared, revealing himself to be completely unharmed, except for how he was coughing on the smoke. What kind of monster could take six exploding rounds to the face point-blank and survi- ...Oh. Right. The nonlethality enchantments. Forgot about those. ...And now, I felt bad about myself.

I looked down, and saw a strange and extremely short old man, approximately three feet tall, and completely unharmed. He had wrinkles, a huge nose, spiky grey hair on the sides of his head, and an enormous olive green top hat still labelled with a piece of old parchment(old-timey paper) with the numbers "6/10" written onto it. Was that a price tag, from some

far-off place where they still used the / sign instead of the dot thing on prices? He looked happy, cheerful, and welcoming.

Suddenly, he pouted adorably. "Well, there's no need to be rude!" He huffed, as if being shot by all six rockets from a rocket launcher at point-blank range was something that was only mildly rude.

I blinked, as if it would change what I was seeing. ...Nope, the short guy was still there. And he was still shorter than most lawn gnomes.

"I'm really sorry." I said to him sincerely. I spun my Gunblade's barrel and listened to the six glowing and clicking sounds that told me my Gunblade's bullets had regenerated. I was starting to love that sound, and it helped to cheer me up here. "I was told to look for someone called 'The Mad Hatter. Cid Highwind sent me, I'm here to buy some armour."

"Yes, that Gunblade has to be one of Cid's." He said, coughing. "The smoke... clever way of getting around the nonlethal rule."

I put my Gunblade back on my back, hoping I wouldn't need it again, and hoping he was okay. I smiled nervously, really hoping he wouldn't order his mannequins to attack.

"It's okay. No harm, no foul." He said, smiling.

"My name's Veronica. Who are you?"

"I'm the Mad Hatter, and welcome to The Mad Hatter's Clothing Emporium!" He announced, grinning and spreading his arms out as wide as he could.

"So... you sell clothes?" I asked, pretending to be clueless.

There was a pause. "...Yes!" He said cheerfully, not even slightly bothered by what a dumb question that was. Good, so his excitement was genuine. Or, he was just a really, really good actor.

"We've got everything, from ascots to zipper-jackets!"

"...Everything?" I asked, smirking and raising an eyebrow.

"Everything!" He repeated happily!

"...Everything." I said skeptically, folding my arms.

"Everything!" He yelled again, just as cheerfully. Wow, this guy was good. "All of the clothes in this store are enchanted to have magical defensive enchantments. If someone suddenly decided, 'Off with your head!', then it'd take them a while!"

"Magical defensive enchantments?" I asked. "So I could buy anything here, and it'd make me invincible?"

"Not invincible. The armour runs off its own magical power supply. When it gets hit, it uses up some of its magic to protect you. Using healing magic can restore its enchantments, as well as healing items."

"Like Shielding, on a Spaceship!" I said, comprehending.

"Now you've got it!" He said happily.

"Wait, so healing items and magic only restore my armour's enchantments? They can't heal me?"

"Oh, don't worry, they do both." The Mad Hatter said dismissively.

Sweet! I didn't even have to buy the large metal armour I was thinking of getting! I could get normal clothes, as long as they had a good armour rating.

...Then again, did I want normal clothes? If I walked around the way I looked now, carrying around my cricket-bat-sized sword, it would look... unusual, to say the least.

"Alright..." I said, pretending to be deep in thought. "If you've got everything..."

"Everything!" He repeated once more, possibly out of habit.

I grinned, and he looked at me excitedly. I confidently said to him, "I want to come out of this room dressed like the taller, stronger, richer and better-dressed slightly-older sister of the resulting child from the semi-unholy union between a Steampunk Queen Victoria and a rejected vocaloid character. ...And then, that sister was press-ganged into performing on the hotter, skimpier and action-packed Japanese Anime version of the Rocky Horror Metal Mystery Shakespeare Show... 2. Directed by Micheal Bay. Guest Starring Tara Strong as my best friend, Dan Green as the awesome knight sworn to protect me, Chuck Norris as the villain, Will Ferrel as the hacker and comic relief, three Elvis Presley Impersonators as the villain's best henchmen, and Marilyn Monroe as herself."

He stared at me, his excited grin still there, not moving an inch. I think I broke his brain. Or, was he using all his brainpower to try and decipher what I'd just said?

After eight seconds of complete immobility, he kept his cheerful grin and said, "I have no idea what you just said, but I know enthusiasm when I see it! Here, take this."

He reached into his pocket and took out a green gem. He passed it to me gently, and said, "This gem is enchanted to transform and disguise you so you'll fit in just about anywhere. It won't affect your weapons, but it will affect you. Everyone gets one, and it'll affect your friends, too. You only need one per team, and I think you should have it."

"Thank you." I said, putting the gem in my other pocket, opposite to the one that held my pet rock.

"Now come on, follow me to the Girl's armour section!" He said and ran off at full speed, which was about as fast as my normal walking speed.

I was glad he'd decided to come along with me, because I didn't have much of an 'eye for fashion', as my cousins called it. I wasn't into fashion. (Not because of any desire to 'stand out from the crowd' by becoming a tomboy, doing sports, hating fashion, and joining the

tomboy crowd, of course. The tomboys didn't like me either). I knew nothing about fashion, because I didn't care about clothing enough to learn all the fashion stuff they teach at... fashion school? The fashion school my mean and dumb cousins went to.

When I picked out clothing, I thought about three things: Price, Practicality, and awesomeness. It wasn't to stand out from the crowd or to look pretty, it was just to make me feel like I was wearing something awesome. And practical, and cheap.

"How about this?" The Mad Hatter asked me, grabbing something from a nearby rack of clothes.

"It's not in my size." I said, trying not to stare at it.

He snapped his fingers, and all of the clothing in the room magically adjusted to fit someone of my exact height and measurements. "It is now!" He said cheerfully.

"Well, it's certainly... lacy." I said, trying to be polite about the outfit he'd picked up. Then I gave up with that, deciding he'd probably be able to tell, and I bluntly and flatly said, "Actually, it's just lace. It's like a wireframe model, made of string and lace. I'd end up having wardrobe malfunctions in that thing faster than I could come up with a pun based on this, and the phrase 'Stringing them along'."

I thought of something, and grinned. "No thanks, I wouldn't want guys to see that and think I was 'Stringing them along!'" I burst into loud, unrestrained laughter at my own joke, because I doubted anyone else would.

The mannequins applauded. I jumped, drew my Gunblade- and then I put my Gunblade back on my back. I looked around, and saw that the Moving Mannequins were all applauding my awful joke. They didn't have faces, so I couldn't tell if it was genuine applause or not. I also saw the Shy Statues, who were openly facepalming at my awful joke.

"How about this? This looks cool." I said, pointing at a full suit of a Paladin's plate armour made entirely from plexiglass.

"You can't afford that." The Mad Hatter said dismissively, running off. He casually tossed the outfit over his shoulder, and ran off. A nearby Moving Mannequin dressed like a 'Hot Cowgirl' with tiny denim shorts, a large brown cowboy hat, and a orange-and-red plaid shirt, rolled her eyes(And her whole head), and went to pick the outfit up and put it back on its peg. The Mad Hatter cheerfully added, "Let's keep going!"

"What makes you so sure of that?" I asked, slightly offended, walking alongside him easily.

"Because no-one can afford that, not even me! It costs more than this building!" He announced cheerfully.

"Eh, fair enough." I admitted, wondering who would be able to buy something so absurdly expensive. "I only have around 1900, so-"

"1900 what?" He asked.

"1900... Munny." I grumbled. That was a ridiculous name for currency. Still, I suppose it was easier to remember.

"In that case, follow me!" He said, skidding on his heels and coming to a complete stop, then running off to the right. I followed him.

We walked right past a grey bikini made from metal plate armour and steel cord, past a large red Eskimo-parka with fur perpetually on fire, and past a full-body rubber spysuit that seemed to squeak just as I looked at it. I could not be payed enough to wear any of those.

"How's this?" He asked, suddenly stopping and grabbing another outfit from the shelves. It looked like a princess's dress, turned up to eleven. It was neon pink, with a tiny size-six corset that supported 'the bouncers' but didn't cover them at all, and had a needlessly huge bell-base-thing around six feet across. Parts of the bell-base's fabric had been torn away, revealing the cool-looking metal grid beneath. The grid had spikes on the bottom, like a birdcage intended to fall like a box trap. A hot-pink bow was tied at the corset's back, larger than the outfit itself, the trails dragging along the floor as he held it.

"...No thanks." I said embarrassedly, taking a step back. "With my legs in that grid-cage-thing, I wouldn't be able to kick anything, or run very fast."

He tossed the outfit again and ran off, leaving his workers behind to pick up the clothes. There appeared to be no organisational system whatsoever... had The Mad Hatter memorised the locations of every outfit in the room?

As we ran, he asked me, "Well, we can't just run around looking at every outfit in the store, that'll take forever!" At first, I thought it was just an expression, but then I remembered how this place was bigger on the inside, and probably didn't have any compunctions with

getting even bigger. "What kind of Class's armour were you thinking of? Knight? Princess? Ninja?"

"...Ever heard of a Grandmaster?" I asked uncertainly.

"Nope! But if you don't see anything you like, you can always mix and match different armour parts to create the perfect look just for you!" He announced, reminding me of a TV advertisement.

I stopped, and smiled. "Anything?" I asked, grinning. "I can mix and match parts from anything, pay a fraction of the price for each piece, and pay the total cost at the end?"

"Absolutely!" He said happily.

My grin grew wider. "Thank you!" I shouted, crouching down and hugging him, his head touching my shoulder. I let go, and he stepped back, blushing awkwardly. He was so adorable! Wait, he's old, how can he be this adorable? Maybe it's because he didn't act like an old man. Nothing like the grumpy old men back home, anyway.

"Alright, let's go!" I said, already thinking of the outfit I wanted to wear. "First things first, I want armour for my arms, good arm-armour. How about..."

* * *

After about half an hour of looking at things, trying things on, I had finally got an outfit. I found it funny how even when I was in a magic clothes and armour store enchanted to be bigger on the inside, and even when I was in a warehouse-sized magical clothes and armour

store larger than any supermarket I'd ever entered, I still took less time shopping than most of the girls I knew.

I admired myself one final time in the changing room's twelve-foot-tall full-body mirror, a similarly oversized white curtain on a steel rail behind me.

I had removed my prescription aviator sunglasses and placed them in my pockets, because thanks to the Libra enchantment, I no longer needed them. My arms were clad in jet-black steel armoured gauntlets with purple highlights, and small square emeralds were on the back of my gloved hands, firmly inset into the gloves. On my legs, I had metal boots made from long slim aerodynamic metal plates, and they didn't even feel as heavy as my previous footwear. I'd gotten the arms from a male Mage Knight's armour, and the legs from a female Dark Assassin's armour. My chest was covered by one of the few chest armours that actually covered all the chest, a solid-black 'Titansteel' chestplate with green highlights, and I'd hidden an ordinary black kevlar bulletproof vest beneath it. I had a diamond the size of my fist inset on a gold medallion on a sturdy steel cord around my neck, hidden under my chest armour.

As I turned and admired myself in the dressing room's mirror once again, my Libra enchantment told me that together, my outfit gave me 28 DT and 25 DR. It sounded good, even though I still had no idea what those numbers meant.

I stepped out of the changing room, threw the heavy white curtain to the right, and showed The Mad Hatter my new outfit.

The Mad Hatter gasped, taking in my new look with an awed expression on his face.

"Let me guess... Not many girls come out of there looking like this?" I asked, summoning my Gunblade and holding it in my hands like a rifle.

"Not at all!" He said happily.

"Cid Highwind also told me to find someone called Chip and Dale. Or Chippendale. He said they're good mechanics, can they fix my Gummi Ship?"

"Absolutely! You'll find them somewhere in the Third District, and they can fix anything! Their shop isn't labelled, so you might want to have a guide take you there, your first time."

"Thanks," I said, and turned to look at the mirror once again. I'd go back to Cid's shop, get the guides, find the Mechanics to fix my ship, and get out of this town. Finally, I could get on with my adventure!

I looked at myself in the mirror, still internally amazed at my transformation from cool-ish bored village girl to an awesome warrior commander. My auburn hair and green eyes looked the same, but I had more confidence, more force in those eyes, more of a reason to live. I had a purpose, and nothing was going to get in my way.

I was going to destroy... no... I was going to kill all of the Heartless, or die trying.


	3. Music to my Fears

I left The Mad Hatter's Clothing Emporium with a smile on my face, armour on my arms and legs, a Gunblade in my hands and a spring in my step. I had a confident smile on my face, and burning determination in my eyes. I walked on towards the Third District, intentionally going straight across the middle and hoping I'd run into a pack of Heartless.

Halfway through the Second District, I got my wish when a pack of Heartless appeared in front of me.

Three Shadow Heartless appeared, and I grinned. I felt the familiar metal music getting stuck inside my head, burning my mind and setting my body alight... metaphorically.

I fired three bullets at the Shadow in the center, destroying them all. Well, that was quick.

Feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied, I ran on and searched for more Heartless to hunt down. Every so often, packs of Shadows or Yellow Operas would appear, only to be struck down or shot down seconds later. The Yellow ones could dodge my shots unless I fired from close range, but that was fine by me. I didn't mind getting close to the action.

It was a slaughterfest. I jogged all over the place, more weak Heartless appearing to feed my appetite and my hunger every few steps. I felt great, I felt alive. Was this how a hunter felt, when he or she had an infinite supply of prey to hunt?

All I knew was... I felt like singing about it.

The music inside my head changed, becoming a repetitive thrash guitar rhythm.

The music in my head paused and I spun my Gunblade's barrel to reload, as I began composing a new song. "Slaughtering!" I shouted as the music in my head began, a repetitive thrash guitar rhythm. "Yeah!" I shouted as more Shadow and Yellow Opera Heartless appeared around me, possibly summoned by my singing. I noticed that not only was this music playing inside my head, but I could actually hear it outside. I kept going. "Whoo!" I shouted, pointing my Gunblade straight up in the air like a sword.

"Let's go!" I shouted, bringing my right arm straight down and firing right in some Shadow's faces.

"Veronica is in the cluuub toniiight!" I sang, firing after every beat as the Heartless around me drew nearer. "You know that you're not gonna last the night!" I half-turned and fired again.

I dashed forwards at a speed that surprised even myself, slicing the Heartless in front of me in half with such force that it disintegrated instantly. "We're here with awesome kiiilling tiiime!" I drew myself up to my full height, and stabbed my Gunblade into a nearby Shadow's head. "I just wanna see ya..." I said, trailing off ominously.

"Drop dead." I said, and fired.

The music in my head kicked things up a notch as the Heartless attacked me all at once, and my weapon started to glow slightly. I started hacking and slashing and stabbing wildly at the monsters around me, tearing them apart and viciously destroying them, every slash sending out a small splatter of black liquid, possibly pure shadow. Whenever I was caught in one of my own explosions, my armour's enchantments protected me without deducting from my overall health, which was nice.

Just as I was starting to get almost slightly bored with all this fast-paced slaughter, that musical feeling overtook me again and I started singing once more.

"Find the camp, and get inside. I fight my way in and do genocide! Kill 'em all when they start to hate... Call it murder but I say exterminate! I'm gettin' bored, with all these fights, but nothing kills time like taking lives! Target practice, and nothing more- Deal with it, I'm killing you all."

"Yo! I'm slicing through these monsters like a madman, stab their face, shoot their heads, and make 'em kick the can, it's slaughter time!"

"IT'S SLAUGHTER TIME!" Came the echoing shout of a loud party crowd that wasn't actually here.

"Yeah, check out my epic weapon!" I shouted, lovingly stroking my Gunblade with one hand and then reloading it. "Gonna slaughter you all, let's take it up to eleven!"

"Everybody knows it's slaaaaughter tiiime! You know that you're not gonna last the night! We're here with awesome kiiiling tiiime! I just wanna see ya... drop dead!"

"Let go!" I yelled.

"Everybody knows it's slaaaaughter tiiime! You know that you're not gonna last the night!"

"I can feel it, baby!

"We're here with awesome kiiiling tiiime! I just wanna see ya... drop dead!"

- Repeat last chorus, with slight difference. Replace 'have a good time' line with, "We both know that you won't last the night!".

"Every day I'm slaughtering." I said, and another swarm of Heartless appeared, flinging themselves at me, ready for me to destroy them in mid-air with each swing, like some macabre game of baseball.

A pack of four Yellow Operas appeared, and I shot them in rhythm with the syllables of my next line. "Slaughtering, slaughtering."

A loud guitar chord rang out as a wave of blue energy burst forth from me, disintegrating all of the heartless like a Smart Bomb. More appeared to take their place, and I was ready for them.

"Try to run... and be the last one to get shot by my gun. Join in and stop sittin' on the fence, it's not evil... It's self-defence."

"One more hits the ground." The invisible crowd of dancers chanted as I shot another Yellow Opera Heartless out of the sky.

"Another round!" I shouted, spinning and reloading my Gunblade.

"Let's clean up this town!" The crowd chanted.

"I don't mess around!" I shouted as a Shadow Heartless pounced at me, and I impaled it in its chest in mid-air, disintegrating it.

"We just wanna know-" The crowd chanted.

"Let's have a ball!" I said.

"How far can you go?" The crowd asked me.

"I'll kill you all!" I roared triumphantly, and the crowd cheered.

"Headshot, headshot, come on now, show me what you've got!" I started chanting as I fired and fired, spinning my Gunblade after each shot, firing wildly as the feelings inside me soared to heights they'd never reached before. "Headshot, headshot, come on now, show me what you've got! Headshot, headshot, come on now, show me what you've got! Come on now, show me what you've got!"

Still, while each shot did take away some Shadow Heartless, more and more started to appear and crowd around me, slowly closing in. Headshot, headshot, headshot, headshot, headshot, headshot, headshot, headshot, headshot,"

They started to climb on top of each other, becoming an oncoming wall of glowing yellow eyes and impenetrable darkness lit only by the explosions of my Gunblade. "Come on now, show me what you've got! Show me what you've got!"

They rose up over me like a tidal wave as the music built up to a crescendo. Show me everything, Show me everything, Show me everything, Show me everything-"

The tidal wave struck from all directions, engulfing me in a sea of black.

The sea of black burst open as an electric blue explosion burst from inside it, as if a car had just exploded. My Gunblade's remaining five bullets started glowing with a harsh crimson light, and they vanished as if they were the cost of my enormous exploding bullet. I reloaded, and went back to firing ordinary ordinance- regular bullets, as I resumed singing.

"Let's go!" I shouted, bringing my right arm straight down and firing right in some Shadow's faces.

"Veronica is in the cluuub toniiight! You know that you're not gonna last the night! We're here with awesome kiiilling tiiime! Everybody's gonna die, die die, toniiight!"

"Whooa-whoah-whoohoa! Whooah-whoaah-whooa-ooo-oo." Sang a choir of what sounded like ghostly choirboys behind me. "Haaa-aaa, haa-aaa-aa! Haaa-aaa-aaa-aa."

"Drop dead!"

"Every day I'm sla-slaughtering." I said, and the song finished.

I posed with my Gunblade in my hands like a rifle and had a confident smile on my face as a loud musical flourish rang out, and the song finished. Explosions burst out all around me, bathing my armoured body in a harsh orange glow.

* * *

I found myself back in Traverse Town, the area completely devoid of Heartless. I collapsed to my hands and knees, gasping for breath, feeling more exhausted than I ever had before. Did I... did I just use an hour's worth of energy in a few minutes? And where did that song

come from? What was the crowd doing there? Why did I burst into song and dance... about slaughtering Heartless?!

"Hey, you!" Some young-sounding girl shouted at me. I was too tired to even glance in her direction.

"What?" I asked tiredly, still looking down, chest heaving as I breathed. My Libra enchantment activated, and told me I'd 'Levelled up' several times. I was now 'Level 7', and I had unlocked the skills 'Libra', 'Charge', 'Cherchez la Fencing', 'Heavy Explosion', 'Rally Spectrum', and 'Dodge Roll'. I decided to test them out later, but I got the feeling I'd already used Charge and Heavy Explosion.

"You just killed all those Heartless, right?" She asked angrily.

"Yep... In a big choreographed... musical number. Heh... I even unlocked... a few new skills, too. Isn't... life... great?" I asked tiredly, wishing I'd brought something to drink. And something to eat.

"Well, it's evil!" She shouted, stamping her foot. It sounded like some kind of heavy boot.

I chuckled darkly, my tired bent-over body shaking as I laughed.

"Hey! What's so funny?" She snapped.

"Weren't you listening... to my song?" I panted, grinning as my head still faced down.

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?!" She yelled.

"It's not evil..." I looked up suddenly, grinning wider. "It's self-defence!"

Finally, I got a good look at her, and she got a good look at me. She stepped back, startled, and I wasn't quite sure what to think of what I saw.

She had messy spiky neon-pink hair, bright red eyes, and her mouth had two oversized fangs- actually, on closer inspection, I noticed she had ordinary sized canine teeth and she'd just filed down her other teeth so she'd appear to have fangs. She wore a black low-cut short-sleeved T-shirt that had the right sleeve completely torn off, a black skirt with badly frayed bottoms, her legs were clad in neon-pink fishnet stockings and she had the largest black leather platform boots I'd ever seen, the soles added least an entire foot of height all on their own. On her face, I saw Egyptian-Pharoh-style black eyeliner around her eyes, a coating of neon pink eyeliner around that black eyeliner, hot-pink lipstick on her lips, and a Valentine's-Heart drawn onto her left cheek by some kind of make-up product. I didn't know much about

make-up, I refused to spend my money on that stuff. Partly because of money constraints, and mostly because I'd never liked make-up that much. Beauty that comes out of a bottle isn't real beauty.

"What?" I asked, surprised.

She held out her hands and summoned her weapon, a large green two-handed Broadsword ninety centimetres long, with a pink hilt and a cartoonish oversized daisy at the blade's tip. It looked like an enormous flower prop, except for the almost-audible sharpness of the sword's actual blade. "You sang evil songs, so you must be evil!"

I'd finally started to catch my breath. I stood up, still breathing deeply. "I've been here for so... so long. I was only supposed to get a weapon, and some armour, and get my ship fixed." I growled. "Instead, I have to haggle with an old guy, THEN I have to buy a decent outfit from the universe's shortest man!" I threw my right arm out to the side. "And he didn't have any decent outfits in stock, so I had to make my own." I clenched my right fist. "AND THEN, I got caught up in slaughtering Heartless..." I threw my head back and shouted, "AND I END UP SINGING ABOUT IT!"

She took another wary step back. Good, maybe I could scare her into running away. I waited for four seconds, my head still back, before looking right at the newcomer with a crazed look in my eye. "And now, instead of going to Chippendale and getting my ship fixed, and leaving

this town and going on an adventure, I have to fight you. Because you want to fight me. And do you know what?! DO YOU KNOW WHAT?! Do you know what the best part is?" I asked insanely, chuckling again. "I'M NOT EVEN TIRED YET!"

She blinked. I pointed my Gunblade straight at her, a crazed, hungry, terrifying look on my face. "Come on! Fight me! I haven't eaten in DAYS! COME ON, COME AT ME! FEEEED MEEEEE!"

I could see the fear on her face, and in her eyes. "I-I'll fight you!" She said, scared.

"Tell me your name." I said quietly.

"M-my name?" She asked.

"TELL ME YOUR NAME!" I bellowed.

"Cheryl Blair!" She squeaked.

"...Is that all? Only two names?" I asked. "Not SIX?!"

"N-no, that's m-my n-name. Wh-who are you?" She asked.

"I am the slaughterer of Heartless! I am the devourer of devourers! I hunt down creatures that eat people for breakfast, and I eat them! I go into busy shops, and spend hours haggling over price, not caring about the others behind me in the queue! I am an avatar of unstoppable force! I am... Veronica Anne Blackwood, Master Tactician!"

"I-I'm not afraid of you! I'm not!" She lied, backing up and holding her sword defensively.

"Good, because I'm not actually evil. Now, can I leave, and get on with my adventure already?" I asked calmly.

"You can't fool me!" She yelled. "You're evil!"

"No, I can't fool you, you're too dumb to fool. But, are you sure I'm evil? Really? Well, in that case, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" I roared. "Fight me!"

Her nervousness started to slip away as she got ready to fight. She held her sword in front of her, letting the weapon lean at me like a Kendo master.

Suddenly, the metal flower at the end of her blade began to spin, letting out a loud mechanical whirr. It reminded me of a buzzaxe, albeit a flower-sword-buzzaxe, and I didn't want to find out if the rotating flower-shaped saw part still worked.

...Crap. That thing would be deadly in close-quarters combat, I had to keep her at a distance the best I could. If I could do that, I could still win-

She charged forwards at a speed I was certainly not expecting from someone in boots like hers. Within a second, she was right in front of me, swinging her floral buzzaxe down at my head. I brought up my Gunblade to block, catching it at the regular sword part rather than

the still-spinning blade. Our blades locked, pushing against each other as we tried to overpower the other. She seemed unusually steady on those platform boots, somehow moving as if she was wearing ordinary footwear. I forced her sword to the right and leapt forwards, getting a quick three-slash combo in on her torso before heel-thrust-kicking her away. Her weapon's flower-saw stopped spinning when I attacked her, I assumed the weapon had something to do with focus.

My attack seemed to take a fair bit of Health off her, judging from the depleted green health bar my libra enchantment was showing me. She slid back on her heels, sparks and dust flying from them as she skidded to a halt. I aimed my Gunblade at her and fired three bullets.

She blocked all three of them, her sword at a different angle each time, and then her sword's buzzsaw started spinning again as I spun and reloaded my Gunblade.

I fired a single shot at her, and she dodge-rolled out of the way. Wow, she was agile. I fired again when she landed, letting her dodge-roll away and firing again. She dodge-rolled, and prepared another forwards charge, with her buzzaxe-sword pointed straight ahead. Great, she was going to try and impale me.

She charged forwards, and to describe this properly I need to use slow-motion. I aimed my Gunblade at her head. She charged at me. I watched her get closer and closer, waiting.

Just as the tip of her sword's rotating blade was about to touch my chest, I fired one of my Gunblade's bullets point-blank at her face. Our magic armour and the town's nonlethality enchantments stopped her head from turning into chunky salsa, but a regular-sized bullet to the face must hurt a lot, let alone one of that size.

She dropped her sword and stumbled away in pain, holding her face and screaming. I took my chance to sweep-kick her legs and knock her down to the ground, and then I drove my Gunblade down into her chest. She still had some Health left, so I furiously slashed at her chest and stomach a lot until her green health bar was completely emptied.

"How's... that?" I asked, exhaling with a predatory grin on my face.

"You're not... evil." The girl gasped tiredly, struggling to speak, barely able to get up off the ground. "No villain could... fight like that!"

"There. Can I go now?" I asked. "Actually, hey, do you wanna join me? I'm going on an adventure."

"Nnnooo..." She wheezed. "I'm... Sorry."

She passed out, her body going limp.

I looked around, seeing if anyone was around. Nobody was there.

I did what any sensible young person in that situation would have done.

I stole her stuff. I stole her clothes, and her weapon, too.

I left her body sitting against The Mad Hatter's store, in a way that implied she'd gotten drunk and fallen asleep there. Thankfully, she'd been wearing underwear and a bra beneath her armour, so I didn't have to do anything I really didn't want to do. I stole her magic enchanted armour, and her floral-themed buzzaxe, and that was enough for me. As I folded up her clothes, they disappeared in a flash of light, and the light was absorbed into me. Great, now I could either change outfits(Or more likely, summon that outfit and sell it) whenever I wanted. I assumed that's what it was, anyway. It seemed more likely than any anti-theft spells, because the knocked-out girl was still knocked out.

* * *

I went back to the First District with a smile on my face, happy that I'd even gotten some new goods into the bargain.

I went back to the First District, and went straight into Cid Highwind's Weapon Store. I saw Cid, and three new... people?

"Hi!" Three anthropomorphic ducks greeted me cheerfully, each one approximately three feet tall and identical apart from the identical but differently-coloured shirts and hats they wore.

"OH GODS, WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN." I declared, recoiling and summoning my Gunblade. I pointed it at the duck in the middle, so I'd get all three in the blast, yet something about their confused look made me hesitate before I could pull the trigger.

"What's wrong, kid?" Cid Highwind asked me, folding his arms. "Never seen a duck before?"

If those animal-people were sentient, they might be offended. I once saw a joke about that on TV, there was a bear and a human and it was way funnier than it sounds now. "N-No, I just... They aren't wearing any underwear!" I loudly stage-whispered to Cid.

Cid chuckled. "Do they look like they need underwear? Besides, they're Toons, they don't have anything to cover up."

"Toons?" I asked. Was he saying there were MORE of these hideous huge-eyed creatures?

"Toons, Cartoons, Living Cartoons." Cid said. "They don't age, they don't tire, they only sleep and eat and breathe when they want to. Their own natural magic protects them, strengthens them, enhances them and allows them to do things and survive things no human ever could. They walk off a cliff, and they won't fall until they look down and notice there's no ground beneath them. An anvil falls on their heads from ten thousand feet, they're out like a light, they'll get nothing more than a bump on the head, and in a couple of minutes they're fine. They're pretty much invincible, but they're all crazy in one way or , they can be killed by The Heartless. ...Also, any kind of Paint Thinner or Paint Dip is really bad for them, it melts them away like acid. Not a pretty sight, kid, trust me."

I tried to imagine what he'd said happening to those three weird but kinda adorable-ish ducks, and I nearly threw up right there. Just the thought of those ducks melting away as they screamed out in agony... Ugh.

Focus! I had to focus!

"I've got some more money. Er, Munny." I said. "Where can I find Chippendale?"

"You mean Chip and Dale?" Red-shirt asked.

"We know where they are!" Blue-shirt said.

"Come on, let's go show her!" Green shirt said, and the three ducks ran out of the shop.

I looked at Cid Highwind in confusion, and he chuckled. "Follow them." He said.

* * *

I followed them out of the shop, round a few corners, up the stairs, and into the Second District, always trailing behind them by a few paces. These guys were fast, and I was tired and hungry. Packs of Heartless started appearing in the Second District as I followed the ducks, and protected them by shooting down anything that moved. I was too tired to bother hitting the Heartless, or cutting them up, so I shot them instead.

Finally, we entered the Third District, and entered a door seemingly at random. I followed, and saw...

A needlessly huge aircraft hangar, easily big enough to fit a hundred fleets of airships. This building took 'Bigger on the inside' to weird levels. Row after row of spaceships lined the hangar, and it all seemed oddly empty or devoid of life. I didn't see any mechanics, or hear the familiar sounds of a car or ship being worked on.

The three three-foot tall ducks ran to a blocky butter-yellow and firetruck-red mess of an airship that popped open as they approached, and two tiny sentient toon chipmunks the size of ordinary chipmunks were captain's chair. The five of them started talking very quickly, and between the Chipmunks' high-pitched voices and the Ducks' unintelligible rasp/accent, I couldn't quite catch the words.

"Are they the mechanics?" I asked sadly, dreading the answer. I couldn't even muster up the energy to be surprised or confused, or even wonder how mechanics that size could pick up the required tools. It was just, _"Huh, well, isn't that something. The professional mechanics building the magical spaceship that'll take me through space and take me on magical adventure... turn out to be two tiny, squeaky-voiced Chipmunks. How 'bout that. Meh. I don't know what I was expecting."_

The sad thing was, I couldn't even muster up the energy to haggle over price. Or anything, really.

I sat down, and thought of Clara. My roommate. My sweet, sweet Clara. I loved her as much as I could love anything. I loved her more that bacon. ...In a totally non-romantic way. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Still...

I left her. I left her alone, just hoping she'd be able to get home safely. She'd probably be eaten alive by the Heartless, all because I was too lazy to go back to Earth and save her. I slid onto my side and curled up into a ball.

"I abandoned my lover and my hometown for swords, guns, spaceships and animal companions! I'm a nerdy stereotype!" I wailed.

"What's up with her?" The black-nosed Chipmunk asked in its squeaky Chipmunk voice.

All three members of the Pantsless Duck Trio shrugged in exact unison. ...That'd make an awesome shipping name. Or band name.

"She's our friend!" The red-shirted one said.

"She wants her ship repaired!" Said the blue-shirted one.

"Yeah!" The green-shirted one agreed.

"And improved!" I said, shakily getting up. Wow, I was more tired than I thought I was. I settled for kneeling down, and making eye contact with the black-nosed Chipmunk. He appeared to be smarter than the red-nosed one. "I want it to have more seats, and more guns, and... more seats. Seats are the main thing, it seems to be doing alright onguns for now. I want to have a lot of friends, so give me... six seats. And one main Captain's chair that overlooks everything. If I have me, a foil of myself with an even more tragic past, a big guy, another smart guy(probably a Hacker or Weapons Specialist), and a medic... that still leaves room for Clara."

The black-nosed Chipmunk squeaked out a short sentence I didn't understand. Not only was his voice high-pitched, but it had an accent. Sweet merciful Athena, WHAT WAS THAT ACCENT?!

"...Excuse me?" I asked politely. "You there, middle duck, what did he say?"

"He said, making it bigger will make it heavier." The middle duck said.

"So, I'll need to make it faster to compensate?" I guessed.

"Uh-huh!" The black-nosed Chipmunk agreed.

"Can I afford this?" I asked warily.

"Nuh-uh." He said. That Chipmunk probably had some kind of Libra-esque ability that could instantly sense a shopper's Munny, rather than their health.

"Super haggling powers, activate." I said tiredly, then sighed. "Look, I don't have time for this. My ship sucks, it's falling apart, and I don't care if you fix it or not: I'm going to save my friend anyway. Cid Highwind sent me, and-"

"Cid sent you?" The red-nosed Chipmunk asked, surprised.

The two Chipmunks huddled together for a moment, quickly chittering unintelligibly. After a few moments of that headache-inducing ear-ra... ear-torture, they broke the huddle and looked at me with a smile. "Half price!" the black-nosed one said to me.

"Can I afford it now?" I asked.

"Uh-huh!" The black-nosed Chipmunk said cheerfully, nodding.

"Great. I... I need a nap, I'll... be awake when you're... done." I said, lied down on my side, curled into a ball and slept.

* * *

In my dreams, I saw blackness, an all-encompassing blackness.

Then, I heard the baseline of a song starting.

Filling the darkness for a single second, there was a still image of two people, both dressed like mages. One woman in her late twenties or early thirties with glasses and a huge hat in a mostly-black outfit, and one very short boy no older than thirteen in a mostly-blue outfit.

The image disappeared to be replaced by a new one, a gloomy dark-haired girl and a cheerful silver-haired guy both clad in purple outfits, both fairly scrawny and non-athletic.

Then, a handsome, fit young man with short blue hair, and an attractive girl with purple hair pulled into a ponytail.

And then,

The people I'd seen reappeared in a desert battlefield, now backed by a small army of around thirty-six. "We are fighting Grima!" The army shouted in unison. A few red-clad enemies ran up to them, axes and swords raised. The silver-haired mage guy shouted some complete gibberish and waved his hands, and the attackers died from heart attacks on the spot.

"Fighting Grima!" The army shouted, as three axe-wielding bandits rode towards them on Dragons.

An older man with pale green hair shouted some nonsense that sounded vaguely French, as he raised a longbow and quickly shot arrows into the eyes of all the fliers, and the eyes of their mounts, from over fifty feet away.

"Fighting Grima!" The army shouted, as a black-and-red-armoured enemy rode at them on a large horse, opening up a large yellow tome.

A muscular fifty-something man with very short hair shouted something that sounded like something The Swedish Chef would say as he cleaved through the rider and his mount with a large axe.

"Oooh-eeoooh-eeeoooeeeoooh! Just go myyyy waaay!" The army sang cheerfully, as they marched towards an attractive and provocatively-dressed white-haired black-clad thirty-something woman who was riding back of a large black horse with wings, who appeared to be the commander of the enemy forces.

* * *

And then, the dream changed.

There was a fierce battle, the sounds of steel ringing out as a few soldiers from the small army I'd seen earlier cashed with a slightly larger force. I had a bird's eye view of all the bloodshed and violence, and my viewpoint kept moving, giving me a sweeping view of the large battle.

To the back of the fighting, there was a tanned young man with messy blonde hair and small pieces of steel armour with attached chains. He was unarmed, he was watching the battle uncomfortably, and he did not seem to be enjoying himself. It was like he wanted to join the battle, but he couldn't.

Suddenly, the mage I'd seen earlier showed up right behind him, and loudly tapped on the side of his axe with her nails.

"Woah! My axe!" The barbarian said, noticing the axe first and later noticing the woman holding it.

"I wondered what manner of ignoramus would mislay their weapon." The female mage said coldly, handing him his axe, slightly struggling with its weight. "Now I know."

And then she suddenly burst into song.

"Now I knoooow! Now I knoooow! Examination has revealed the liiiight!" She sang loudly, spreading out her arms.

"Uh... Miriel?" The blonde barbarian asked concernedly.

"Now I knoooow! Now I knoooow! I'll prove that my mother was riiiight!" She yelled, taking a red tome out of her robe and pointing it towards the sky like a sword.

Everyone slowly stopped fighting, and turned to look at her.

"I don't care what they're going to say! Let the war rage ooooon!" She sang, opening her tome and launching a huge torrent of flame into the sky. The light caught on her glasses, the lens glare turning them opaque and white. "The truth never bothered me anyway."

* * *

And then, the dream changed again.

The interior of someone's house, in a dining hall. On each seat, there was a carnival freak, and there was a tall and very thin old man sitting at the head of the table. Suddenly, he spread out his arms and cheerfully sang, "Do you wanna kill an Orphan?" He wrapped his arms around himself as if embracing himself. "Or I'd marry one in a play!"

"I want all their inheritance," He sang, clenching his fist as if it was full of dollar bills. "It's not through random chance," He threw his fist into the air and sang, "I need some extra paaaay!"

He suddenly jumped up onto the table, rattling the cutlery. "We used to be free firemen... And now we're not," He threw both hands into the air and loudly sang, "And I think you all know whyyyyy!"

"Do you wanna kill an Orphan?" He sang, and at that very moment, three kids entered the room; one girl in her late teens, one boy in his early teens, and one very young baby in the guy's arms. They looked shocked, as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Not caring at all, the old man pointed at the baby and sang, "It doesn't have to be the small one!"

"GO AWAY, ORPHANS!" The old man bellowed suddenly.

"Okay, bye..." The girl said quietly, as the Orphans backed away slowly and left the room.

The song kept going, but the scene changed.

At the edge of a town, there was a different, kinder-looking old man, and a ten-year-old boy dressed mainly in red.

* * *

"Do you want to be a Master?" A different old man sang cheerfully while a ten-year old buy on a red shirt and hat watched in awe. "You're going to need a Poke ball!"

He walked into some tall grass, and a weird-looking orange caterpillar thing jumped out. "Go into the grass and find something, then go and capture him, I'm sure you'll catch them all!"

He got a large red capsule out of his pocket, and tossed it at the caterpillar like a baseball. The capsule opened up, and the caterpillar was turned into red light and absorbed into the ball. Then, he eagerly and intensely leaned forwards as he watched the ball rock slightly, heart rate racing out of control. "It gets a little intense, All this random chance, Just watching the ball click by..."

The ball shook and clicked three times, before sounding a higher-pitched chime that told everyone the ball had successfully captured the orange caterpillar thing. The old man proudly picked the ball up, and the scene changed again.

* * *

In a small and dark office room, there was a handsome man in his late twenties with spiky black hair slicked back and a sharp blue suit, only now he was hunched over his table, elbows on the table, head in his hands, the very picture of absolute depression and defeat. The door creaked open, the tiniest flicker of light entering the room. "Pheonix?" A young teenaged girl with darkish brown hair and a soft-purple robe-thing asked nervously as she entered the room, and stayed close to the doorway.

"Please, I know you're in there." She sang softly. "People are asking where you've been..."

He didn't change, acknowledge her entrance, or move from that spot at all. It wasn't even clear if he could hear her. He just looked so lost, so defeated, so... empty. Like a part of him had died, and all that remained was an empty shell.

"I know you've been legally disbarred, But we have come this far, this can't get in our way!" She sang, the tiniest piece of hope entering her voice.

"We only have each other, it's just you and me... What are we gonna do?" She sang, pleading.

"Do you wanna get some burgers?" She asked weakly, and when there was no response, she gave up and quietly left the room, the door creaking closed as she left, until the door clicked closed with the sad finality of a dying man falling to the ground.

* * *

"WAKE UP, MISS VERONICA!" The three ducks shouted into my ears in unison.

"ALL GLORY TO THE-" I screamed as I woke up. "What?!" I asked, looking around.

I was still in that insanely huge and strangely empty garage/hangar, surrounded by three ducks and two tiny chipmunks. But was it just me, or did the three ducks look slightly... shaken? Creeped out? ...At me? I started to remember what had happened before I slept, though I had no idea what happened to the ducks to make them look at me like that. "...Is my ship fixed?" I asked tiredly.

"Yeah!" Both Chipmunks chirped.

"How long did it take?" I asked, getting up.

"Five minutes!" The Chipmunks said happily.

"But when you were sleeping, you were saying some... really weird stuff." The red-shirted duck said, unsure of how to put it.

"It was creepy!" The blue-shirted duck said, scared.

"So we'd thought we'd let you sleep for half an hour." The green-shirted duck finished. "So... there's your ship!"

The three ducks pointed over to one of the ships in the hangar. I turned to look at it, and the second I turned away, the three ducks fled as if they were being chased by something.

"...I've started talking in my sleep again?" I asked, embarrassed.

The two Chipmunks nodded enthusiastically, a little creeped-out.

"So... where's my ship?" I asked.

"There!" Chip and Dale said as they pointed to the right, at a different ship than the ones the three ducks had pointed at. I looked at it, and my jaw dropped.

It was bigger, now about the size of a 4x4 car. It was a royal-purple and imperial-gold blocky sculpture, like an 8-bit sculpture of a bullet, with four legs at the base that touched the ground to support it and keep it from rolling away. Four rapid-fire laser-guns rested on each of its 'corners' like before, except now it had a lot more seats inside, and more leg room to go with it. Two plush black brown synthetic-leather seats at the front, side by side, four more in a similar row behind them, and a slightly-bigger black synthetic-leather chair lined with highlights of imperial-gold rested at the back, clearly the Captain's Chair.

"A top speed of 170 smph, high armour and power ratings, at maximum it can comfortably seat six people plus the captain, but there's enough room overhead and enough seat size for extras to sit on their laps, and no maximum weight limit! Plus, it's a little bigger on the inside, and there's a lower deck for storage, too. If you can fit it in there, it can be carried!"

"It's... IT'S BEAUTIFUL!" I gasped, tears welling up in my eyes. "It's so swift, so fast, so elegant, it's... How did you know I wanted those shades of purple and gold?"

"Magic!" The Chipmunks chirped. "Those colours were in your heart, so the ship changed to fit your Heart! Then we made the modifications you asked for!"

"I love you guys so much!" I yelled, quickly scooping up those chipmunks and hugging them tight to my heart.

I set them back down after a few moments, and the Chipmunks giggled and blushed adorably.

"Wait... I was told a ship can only carry as many people as it has chairs for, and if someone exceeds the maximum seating limit, it won't take off." I said.

"Huh? Who told you that?" The black-nosed Chipmunk asked.

"Someone that... didn't want me flying with them, I guess." I said, realizing that Katherinn What's-Her-Name-Chan lied to me. Huh. In that case, she deserved what I did to her!

"Does it have Autopilot?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"All Gummi Ships have autopilot! They need it! Without it, they handle like a greased pig on ice skates, uh huh!" The black-nosed Chipmunk said quickly. "Good luck not crashing without it!"

"Alright. Thanks again, guys!" I said cheerfully, running over to the ship and opening it up, and hopping in.

The ship's controls were just in front of the Captain's chair. My chair. I got in, grabbed the controls, turned my ship on, and grinned. The roof slowly came down and sealed me in, the thrusters fired up, and the ship rose ever so slowly off the ground.

"Wait, not in here, not in here!" The Chipmunks said, panicking.

I drove forwards at full speed, my ship's thrusters blazing out as I shot out of the garage/hangar and out into the Third District, the turbulence so powerful that it could be seen by the naked eye as spiralling grey and white vortex lines whipping about behind my ship. I drove straight up into the air, leaving that planet behind.

The Chipmunks screamed as the turbulence blasted them back, flinging them several feet away and against the walls hard enough to dent the walls. They got up, dazed, as small yellow stars swirled above their heads. "Oww..." They moaned as they cradled their aching heads, only mildly hurt from something that powerful.

I flew on, away from Traverse Town, glad all this stuff was finally over and done with. I'd bought my weapon, my armour, and my ship, and I'd even levelled up a few times from fighting so many Heartless. ...In a big song-and-dance number. I'd look into that later. Right

now, I wanted to get to the next world, whatever that might be.

I slowed to a halt once I was a good distance from that planet, and I looked at the ship's screen.

The screen had a lot more worlds to choose from, almost as if the added size and power allowed it to travel further without stopping... Either that, or Chip and Dale had removed whatever programmed-in limits the ship's GPS software had. Available for choice, I saw Earth-03, the Earth I was from. I'd go there later, once I had a full team of adventurers. There was some high-ranked world called the Olympus Colosseum, I'd go there when I was stronger. There was another Earth, Earth-12, which looked like my Earth except there was a large grey and purple dead-looking full-of-bones underworld-like blob hanging from beneath it. Do not want. I kept on scrolling the screen around, looking for other worlds.

I stopped looking when I saw a certain world, one I had always wanted to go to.

Equestria.

Words could describe the intensity of how much I squeed right there. My grin grew wider than it ever had before, and I made a sound like a quiet squeal of intense joy so overpowering I could barely breathe, before trailing off into a quiet giggle.

I slammed my finger down on the Touch-Screen and chose Equestria, and I grabbed my ship's controls the way a starved person at a dinner table would grab cutlery as he waited for his food to be delivered right to him after years and years of starvation.

"To Equestria!" I squealed with glee.


End file.
